by Dwight M. Miller
September 22, 1901: Imagine a large crowd of Exeter citizens gathered in the Oddfellow’s Hall on a dusty Pine Street on a warm but cloudy Monday evening. A big storm is predicted in the next few days. The emotions of the day ran high as men and women packed the hall. Every person in the room seemed to be animated about the publisher of the local newspaper, The Penny Press—Thomas W. Baker. Baker himself was in the room and bracing himself for what he knew would come—an outpouring of dissatisfaction for his failure to mention anything in his paper about the recent assassination of President William McKinley. McKinley was shot on September 6 by a Polish-American anarchist in Buffalo, New York, and died a week later. His funeral was a national affair and considered the largest in America to that date. The result of the meeting was a signed statement, led by Exeter’s first citizen, H.R. Stephens. Stephens came prepared with: (1) a statement of Exeter values; (2) statements of misalignment of the Penny Press with Exeter’s citizens; and (3) resolutions to (a) condemn the Penny Press, (b) condemn the anarchist assassin and all those sympathetic with him and (c) to invite a newspaper man more aligned with Exeter to start a rival paper. It was signed by twenty-eight men of the community. The resolution made it very clear that the socialist views of the local publisher were not the views of the townspeople, and they did not want to be painted with the same brush. This resolution was sent to the Visalia paper with a request to print it in its entirety. They specified they wanted it to be published in a “Democratic newspaper.” The wire services picked up this story, and this conflict was noted in newspapers all over California— “Socialist publisher not mourning the President!” Baker’s lengthy rebuttal was printed in the Visalia paper—to summarize, he said, “I had an agreement with a friend to only print local news.” That response was described as “thin.” The signatories:
I learned of this story after some research on photo below, showing the Exeter Lodging House.
In 2023, Stefani Woods of Community West Bank in Exeter donated three large posters depicting snapshots of Exeter history. They all hang in the hallway at the Center for Art, Culture and History-Exeter (CACHE). This photo of the Exeter Lodging House was a mystery that sent me on a number of trails to find information about this building. What I learned on that journey is worth sharing. Thomas W. Baker and his wife Minneola built it in 1894 when they arrived in town. The building had an eighteen-year life as it was torn down in 1912. The people in the photo are uncertain, but they could be the Baker family. This photo could have been taken in about 1899 with eight-year-old Ralph, Thomas, Minneola, and her mother, Mrs. M.T. Rogers. Mrs. Rogers died at age seventy-three in 1903, while living with the Bakers. Six-year-old Louise is missing.
Who was Thomas W. Baker? Born in 1860, he grew up near London, England, and was well educated. At age twenty-five he immigrated to the United States where, two years later, he met and married Minneola Rogers in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1887. Shortly after marriage they were drawn to the newly formed socialist utopian Kaweah Colony in Three Rivers, California. (The Kaweah Colony is one of the most compelling stories in Tulare County history. For more read- Co-Operative Dreams, A History of the Kaweah Colony by Jay O’Connell.) The young couple became part of the Kaweah Commonwealth until it disbanded around 1893. He is believed to have worked on the team publishing their newspaper that was distributed across the nation and Europe where they had many supporters and interested parties. Baker served as a county-appointed constable in the Kaweah district (Three Rivers) for a couple years and then relocated to the new township of Exeter with Minneola and his two small children, Ralph and Louise. There was no newspaper in this town of less than two hundred so he was optimistic.
During his seven years of active civic life prior to the assassination of McKinley, he made his enthusiasm for socialism very clear. He was a true believer—socialism was the key to combat the evils of a capitalistic society and forge a brighter future for the world. Socialism was his hobby, his religion and his passion. He and Minneola, a talented photographer and skilled manager, bought a block of land near what is now the Mayflower Packing House just west of the tracks north of Visalia Road and immediately built their building. (On old Exeter maps, that block is still called the “Baker addition.”) Mrs. Baker was the proprietor of the “house”, providing meals and rooms for travelers stepping off the nearby train for an overnight stay. They also hosted people regularly for card games. In addition, from that building Mr. Baker wrote, printed, published, and distributed Exeter’s first newspaper, The Penny Press. The Press was meant to include all the local news and gossip of this new and rapidly growing township.
Listed below are some miscellaneous highlights gleaned from the news of those years. Note that some of the men who served with him on boards are signatories on the resolution against him but most are not:
| Nov 1895 | Baker selected as on one of the five Directors of the newly formed Exeter Cemetery Association. Other board members: H.L. Hamilton, D.M. Ferrill, Grant Kirkman, T.G. Montgomery. |
| Nov 1895 | Elected Vice President of the Exeter Literary and Debating Society, joining President J.E. Buckman. Other officers: James Kirk, E.S. Balaam and A.C. Selig. This was a great venue for promoting and discussing socialism. |
| Jan 1896 | Baker appeals to other Exeterites to join him in establishing a ?labor exchange?, an effort to promote unionization of all workers in the area. |
| Apr 1896 | Bakers add a new paper dedicated to local matchmaking or ?bringing lonely hearts together? called Cupid and Mammon |
| May 1896 | Bakers buy two shares in the new telephone line being installed from Springville to Visalia. |
| Nov 1898 | Mrs. Baker sets up a photo gallery in the Exeter House with stationery and other sundries. |
| Mar 1900 | Baker becomes a director, along with Grant Kirkman, T.W. Newman, and F.A. Emory, as they invest in the Black Diamond Oil Company of Exeter. The massive Kern River oil discovery had just happened months earlier. If there was oil in Exeter, they didn?t want to miss out. |
| Apr 1901 | Along with S.J. Sims, started the Farmersville Fireside, a new publication for Farmersville. |
| Sep 1901 | Changed name of Black Diamond Oil to ?Exeter Oil Company.? ?The Black Diamond Oil Company? name had been claimed earlier by some African-American investors from Hanford. The Exeter Oil Company operated for about more 95 years, mostly in Kern and Ventura Counties. Baker saw no return on his investment. |
| Sep 1901 | Controversy regarding McKinley |
| Sep 1903 | Penny Press goes out of business |
| 1907 | Moved to Hanford |
There is no evidence that he ever printed this quote but he was alleged to have said, in the days when McKinley lay dying, “Whether it be for the best or the worst, McKinley seems to be ‘a gone coon just now.’” The reference to a “gone coon” was to the practice of hunting racoons with dogs who would chase them up a tree until the hunter arrived to shoot them. Because socialists and anarchists were grouped in the same ideological family, Baker’s lack of sympathy for the President when the rest of the country was praying for his recovery effectively cast him out of the Exeter community.
In quick response to the resolution’s appeal for a new newspaper, the Methodist pastor’s thirty-year-old son, Fred Page, Jr. started his first issue of the Exeter Sun in November 1901. In that fateful autumn of 1901, the Sun was born. The first paragraph in the new paper began with this sentence: “The Exeter Sun has risen, and yesterday its rays for the first time illuminated the orange belt.” Page, Jr. ran the paper for a couple years before heading north to attend medical school. The Sun was then run by a succession of publishers until 1915, when Watson Clawson, took it over for the next forty years. The current Sun Gazette is its descendant; thanks to current publisher, Reggie Ellis and his team, it still has its “rays illuminating the orange belt.”
The Bakers lasted two more years before they lost all their subscriptions and advertising. They moved to Hanford in 1907, where Baker sold magazine subscriptions and tried his hand at farming in Kings County. Alas, business and his personal life both fared poorly. By 1912, his marriage fell apart and Minneola filed for divorce citing, “failure to provide” as her grounds for dissolution. The next five years he became increasingly depressed over his debts and his inability to make a living. Despondent about his lot in life, on May 2, 1917, at 8:30 p.m., on West 5th Street in Hanford, he grabbed a steel rod, climbed a pole and touched the rod to the wire, hoping to electrocute himself immediately. His effort at suicide did not go as planned since the pole he climbed was a telephone pole and not an electric power pole. He got a static shock that was enough to knock him off the pole where he fell and broke both ankles. He also suffered back and internal injuries. He died in the hospital a week later in what was described as “paralysis of the bowels.” He still owned some of the lots in the Baker addition of Exeter which were sold to pay off a portion of his debts.
Old timers in Exeter described him later as a likable fellow. He dreamed of drawing fellow socialists to Exeter and establishing a communal labor hall where men might live and utilize labor script in place of cash. Like many other socialist efforts before and after him, it didn’t work out so well, as the dream is always better than the reality. Thus ended the sad life of Thomas W. Baker but for the seven-year period when he was involved in every aspect of the growing Exeter community’s life.
