History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century/4/William W. Junkin
WILLIAM W. JUNKIN, veteran journalist, was born at Wheeling, Virginia, January 25, 1831. He attended the common schools in boyhood and at eleven years of age set type in the office of the Wheeling Argus. In 1843 he came with his father's family to Iowa Territory, locating on a farm in Lee County. In 1845 on removing to Fairfield in Jefferson County, he became an apprentice in the office of the Iowa Sentinel, a weekly paper established that year by A. R. Sparks. In the summer of 1849 he went to Fort Des Moines where Barlow Granger was about to issue the first number of the Iowa Star, the first newspaper published at the future capital of the State. He procured work in the office and assisted on the first issue of the paper, continuing in the office for some months. Returning to Fairfield, on the 26th of May, 1853, he became the half owner and publisher of the Fairfield Ledger which had been established about a year before. Mr. Junkin in August, 1854, purchased Mr. Fulton's interest and became sole editor and proprietor. He was a Whig and then a Republican. Few men have worked more intelligently for the development of a town and State that this pioneer journalist. Mr. Junkin held many local offices but never sought higher positions, preferring to give his best energies to his chosen profession. During General Harrison's administration he served as United States Indian Inspector. Mr. Junkin died at his home in Fairfield on the 21st of February, 1903, at the age of seventy-three, after service as a journalist continuously for more than half a century on the Fairfield Ledger.