Goodspeed Publishing Co.’s 1889 History of Hickory, Polk, Cedar, Dade and Barton Counties, Missouri includes profiles of prominent citizens. The History‘s forward said the subjects of the profiles had read them for accuracy.
Theo. L. Kerr, editor and proprietor of the Jerico Springs Optic, was born in Newark, N. J., in 1854 and is the youngest of four children born to Joseph and Jane Hopkins Kerr, both of whom were born in Sussex County N.J., the former in 1819 and the latter about 1825. They are now residing in Newark and are hale and hearty old people.
The father is a printer by trade and as early as 1850 published the Temperance Advocate in Newark and is now the proprietor of a job printing office in that city. Here it was that the immediate subject of this sketch, Theo. L. Kerr, received his education and in his youth learned the printer’s trade of his father, afterward working in different offices.
In 1877, he went to Stafford, Kan., and for a short time edited the Stafford Citizen, He then gave up this work and went to Arkansas but after tilling the soil for a short time near Little Rock, he was employed on the Little Rock Gazette and at the end of six months came to Jerico Springs and March 30, 1888, the first copy of the Jerico Springs Optic was issued The paper is published in the interest of the Democratic party, is bright and newsy and some useful information can always be gleaned from its columns.
In 1876, he was married to Miss Hannah Myers, who was born in Bradford County, Penn., in 1856 and is a daughter of Jacob and Hilah Myers. He and wife are the parents of four children. He is a member of the Typographical Union and his wife belongs to the Christian Church.
Jerico Springs on parade 