JAMES EDMUND SCRIPPS

(1835-1906)

Eldest child of James Mogg Scripps of Rushville, Illinois, a town in west central Illinois, south of Chicago, near Champagne/Urbana. James learns the newspaper business along with his brother from his older cousin “ Uncle John” in Chicago as a teenager.

From his newspaper employer (who was not affiliated with the Chicago Tribune) James with colleague/partner William Brearley over time purchases a controlling interest in a small Detroit daily morning newspaper, The (Detroit) Advertiser and Tribune. After an insured fire later destroys the paper’s offices, Scripps and Brearley with their share of the insurance money start the daily Evening News in 1873. Brearley leaves and sells his interest to Scripps. Brearley moves to NYC where he founds the AMERICAN NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS’ ASSOCIATION.

Note: The (Detroit) Daily Tribune was established in 1849. In 1862 the Tribune merged with the (Detroit) Daily Advertiser becoming the Advertiser and Tribune.
The Advertiser and Tribune continued to publish as a separate morning daily under the management of Scripps and Brearley, and in 1877 the paper merged with the eleven-year-old Detroit Daily Post changing its name to the Post and Tribune. Then in 1885 the name of the paper was simplified to (Detroit) Tribune. In 1891 Scripps purchased the remaining stock of the Tribune to secure an Associated Press connection. The Tribune continued as a separate daily until 1915 when it merged into the Evening News. (The Tribune name was included on the mast head of the Sunday News as the Sunday News and Tribune until 1917, but as an independent daily newspaper the Tribune ceased to exist in 1915.)

James Scripps is one of eleven surviving children: His oldest surviving sister and younger sibling was ELLEN BROWNING SCRIPPS and his youngest half- brother ( one of five half-siblings) was EDWARD WYLLIS SCRIPPS, both of whom were instrumental in founding the EVENING NEWS ASSOCIATION, Scripps Publishing (E.W.Scripps Newspapers), and Scripps–Howard Broadcasting.

NOTE: Another separate and unaffiliated, large chain of small market dailies was founded by E. W. Scripps, Jr, eldest grandson of E.W. Scripps, known as the Scripps League of Newspapers. The lead newspaper in the chain was the Provo (Utah) Herald. See “SCRIPPS, The Divided Dynasty, A History of the First family of American Journalism” by Jack Casserly, 1993, copyright Mr. and Mrs. Edward W. Scripps, ISBN: 1-55611-378-1

James married Harriet (Hattie) Josephine Messenger (1838-1933) September 16, 1862. The Messenger family was an old Boston family, having emigrated to Massachusetts in 1640. Harriet’s mother was born into the more prominent and equally old Warren family of Boston. While no direct lineage has yet been traced, this is almost certainly the same Warren family that counted amongst it’s progeny Dr. Joseph Warren, one of the very first colonial trained physicians and surgeons. During the American War of Independence as General Warren, he helped plan the Boston Tea Party and commanded the Boston militia during their defense of Bunker Hill during which battle he was killed.

NOTE: James’s Chicago employers gave him part ownership in their Chicago paper to entice him to NOT enlist in the Union army during the Civil War with ten other family relatives. His youngest full brother John Scripps died in a Confederate prisoner of war camp.

James E, Scripps in 1879, was named one of the three first Commissioners of BELLE ISLE in charge of procuring the island as a city park and also expanding the boundaries of Detroit to include the Grand Blvd. development, which terminated at the bridge to the island. James championed and editorialized in favor of the Belle Isle land acquisition as a city park and promoted the acquisition in his newspapers.

When James Scripps first moved to Detroit along with his wife and then encouraged his siblings to join him in building his Detroit newspapers, he housed the growing Scripps clan in a modest rented house in Detroit. The clan shared this rather cramped lodging for many years, a savings which helped finance the growth of the Evening News. Years later in 1898 he constructed a large rambling brick Norman Tudoresque residence within a walled city park at the junction of Grand River Avenue and Trumbull Street. Here his widow Harriet lived until her death in 1933. The house was destroyed by arson and was demolished in 1980’s.

James Scripps and Brearley in 1883, promoted the Detroit Art Loan Exhibition as the forerunner of the first museum. The popular success of this temporary exhibition was the genesis of a permanent art museum in Detroit. Then in 1885, along with a small circle of friends and at the urging of his partner Brearley who first had the idea of establishing a permanent museum, James co-founds THE DETROIT MUSEUM of ART (D.M.A.). James contributed $50,000 (the largest single contribution) towards the construction of a building for the DMA on Jefferson Avenue at Hastings Street, and for the opening of the art museum building in 1888 from his large personal art collection James loaned his 85 old master pictures. The following year,1889, James donated 72 of these old master pictures to the DMA including the great and large picture of the Meeting of David and Abigail by Peter Paul Reubens, which is amongst the very first pictures by Reubens to enter a public art collection in the United States. James Scripps had personally bid for this picture while attending a country house auction in England. In his book “FIVE MONTHS ABROAD”, 1882, in which he describes his family trip to Europe in the summer of 1881, James Scripps wrote of his visit to Belgium, on pages 48 & 49, “Antwerp was the home of Peter Paul Reubens, the greatest of Flemish painters (born 1577, died 1640), and his best works are to be seen here.”

In 1890 James builds TRINITY REFORMED EPISCOPAL CHURCH adjacent to his primary residence on Trumbull at Grand River Avenue. Mason and Rice are the named (local) architects, but the design was probably influenced by RALPH CRAM of Boston, presumably at the suggestion of Herbert Langford Warren. The church is also virtually adjacent to the first home of George and Ellen Booth with a young George G. Booth functioning as a virtual project manager.

NOTE: Both Herbert Langford Warren, a close cousin of Harriet Messenger (Harriet’s mother was a Warren), and Ralph Cram were colleagues in the architectural firm of H.H. Richardson in Boston. They were also best friends. Both Warren and Cram were founders of the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts in 1896. H. Langford Warren was the architect chosen by James and Harriet Scripps to design and build the mortuary chapel for their two deceased children in Woodmere Cemetery in Detroit. Unlike Warren, Ralph Cram was a purist when it came to designing neo-gothic churches in the English medieval vernacular style. Cram did not approve of the use of modern construction techniques using concrete and steel. This is perhaps the single most unusual element in the building of this church. The footing for the stone column supports for the nave and chancel are also stone and massive. While it is well documented in the papers of James Scripps that he spent large amounts of time studying English medieval gothic architecture with George Mason, and together they travelled and studied surviving English medieval churches, it is probable that both Warren, who lectured on medieval English architectural history at Harvard, and Cram had input into the final design of Trinity Reformed Episcopal Church. In addition, George Booth’s exposure to Warren and Cram during his role as construction supervisor of Trinity Church foreshadows George’s later involvement with Ralph Cram of the initial design of Christ Church Cranbrook.

James Scripps creates a committee of management for the Detroit Evening News following his near death from a typhoid epidemic in the city in 1882, which also took the life of his then only son James Francis Scripps, age 12( James and Harriet’s number 3 daughter Harriet Mary Scripps died at age 2 in 1875). The management committee, known as the QUADRIPARTITE AGREEMENT, was signed in 1887. The committee members were James E. Scripps, George Henry Scripps, E. W. Scripps and John Scripps Sweeney (a cousin). The purpose of the agreement was firstly to prohibit the sale or transfer of Evening News stock to “outsiders” and secondly, from James’s point of view, to dilute and hopefully control the ambitions and newspaper speculation of young E.W., whom James did not trust. Later this management committee becomes the subject of litigation contesting a major Scripps family inheritance battle following the death of James’s brother George H. Scripps in 1900. George H. Scripps in his contested will attempted to bequeath all of his shares in the Detroit Evening News to E. W., thus transferring control of the News from James to E.W. The resolution of this litigation results in the loss of control of the News by E.W., which he claimed by the terms of the management committee and George’s will. As a consequence of the settlement of this litigation, sole control of the Evening News Association passes to the four children of James Scripps, and the James Scripps family transferred their shares in Scripps Publishing to the other Scripps family members, principally E. W. Scripps and Ellen Browning Scripps. The Scripps family newspaper holdings are formally partitioned, with E. W. and the other siblings of James Scripps losing all claim to a financial interest or control over the Detroit News. George G. Booth then becomes President and Chairman of the Evening News.

FYI….James Scripps dies on May 28, 1906, and his estate is settled in 1908. The control of the News given to George G. Booth on behalf of his wife and her three surviving siblings. George and Ellen break ground on their new primary residence, Cranbrook House, the same year, 1908, Ellen having receives her inheritance from her father.

NOTE: But for the “favorable” decision in the Scripps inheritance litigation to hold that the management committee agreement did not supersede and thereby pass control of the News to E.W. and the Scripps cousins outside of James Scripps’s estate documents, there never would have been the funds for the development of Cranbrook.