Page:History of the newspapers of Beaver County, Pennsylvania.djvu/120

 96 HISTORY OF BEAVER COUNTY PAPERS. is extensively engaged. As an editor Mr. Stiffey had a lively and caustic style, that was apt to stir up the oppo- sition and create interest. Dr. Porter was the advertising manager, a gentleman of excellent qualities and well lilsed by the people. He is now a practicing physician in Beaver. Mr. Mellon was business manager, but was forced on account of ill health to sell his interest in the paper and removed to Florida, where he again took up the work amid the balmy breezes of his new home. He improved in health but it was of short duration, death overtaking him one morning as he was on the way from his residence to the newspaper office. Samuel K. Alexander was foreman of the office, and his son James Alexander was a printer, who is now fore- man of the "Star" composing rooms, and has been with the paper since the daily was started. Samuel K. Alexander after more than half a century in the work, has retired to private life and is now a resident of Beaver. One of the men who contributed much to the starting of the daily edition, was Theodore Lampert, the first news editor, a sketch of whom we give with the "Star." He was born at Crestline, O., April 11, 1860, received his education in the public schools of that place from which he was graduated in June 1878. The same year he was selected a teacher and taught in the schools from which he was graduated, for two years. In the fall of 1880 he went to work for the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne & Chicago Railroad as freight brakeman, but was soon appointed to a clerkship in the freight office of the same railroad at Mansfield, O. While serving in this capacity he con- tributed to the local newspapers railroad happenings, which work led him gradually into the newspaper field. In the spring of 1884 he became local editor of the "Mansfield Shield and Banner," a weekly, and six months