Born in Vestal, New York, David Ross Locke was a journeyman newspaper editor becoming the owner and editor of The Jeffersonian in Findlay in 1861. It was in Findlay Locke started his series of letters from the character “Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby,” ostensibly an ignorant and violently prejudiced slavery sympathizer. The biting satire helped influence many people concerning the evils of slavery and racial prejudice. Nasby also focused on other social issues, such as voting rights for women, political expediency, and temperance. Locke’s Nasby letters were so popular in that time that it even drew interest from President Abraham Lincoln. By 1865, Locke had moved to Toledo and taken on the ownership of what would become the Toledo Blade. David Ross Locke died of tuberculosis on February 15, 1888, in Toledo.
(b. 1833 d. 1888: newspaper editor, satirist)
