DUANE
Get the App
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker says about the Jefferson Jimplecute. Now, every newspaper worth its ink has a story behind its name, and this one, friends, might be the finest name in the history of American journalism. The Jimplecute.
Say it slow. Jim. Pleh.
Cute. Rolls right off the tongue and lands somewhere between a square dance call and a legal document. The marker lays it out plain, and once you hear it, you won't forget it.
Those nine letters stand for something. Join Industry, Manufacturing, Planting, Labor, Energy, Capital in Unity Together Everlasting. That's the acrostic that headed the 1848 paper of a man named E.
C. Beazley. Take the first letter of each of those words, string them together, and there it is.
Jimplecute. A whole philosophy of a community compressed into one glorious made-up-sounding word. Beazley was reaching for something ambitious with that motto, and he gave Jefferson, Texas, a name that has outlasted just about everything else.
Then along comes Ward Taylor, born in 1832, died in 1894. He's the one who founded the present Jimplecute, the paper that would go on to be published from 1865 all the way to 1926, carried through those decades by his family. That's a family holding the torch for their paper, their town, their name.
After the Taylor family's long run, the Jimplecute passed through other hands. Mrs. H.
P. Winsborough. Tom Foster.
Arthur M. Bower. Then Mr. and Mrs.
Tom Hicks. Then Mr. and Mrs. Dwaine Dennis.
Each name a chapter. Each chapter set in Jefferson, Marion County, where a nine-letter word still carries the weight of a whole community's ambitions. The Jimplecute.
Some newspapers tell you what happened yesterday. This one tells you who a town believed it could be, right there in the name.
What the marker says
Initials of words "Join Industry, Manufacturing, Planting, Labor, Energy, Capital (in) Unity Together Everlasting" headed 1848 paper of E.C. Beazley. Ward Taylor (1832-1894) founded present "Jimplecute," published 1865-1926 by his family. Later owners: Mrs. H. P. Winsborough, Tom Foster, Arthur M. Bower, Mr. and Mrs. Tom Hicks, Mr. and Mrs. Dwaine Dennis. (1973)