Elizabeth Catherine Darst 1846-1883

ELIZABETH C. DARST

Editress of the Circleville Herald, and a sketch of whose ancestry appears elsewhere, was born and educated in Circleville, being valedictorian of the high school, class of 1865. From that time until she assumed the editorial and financial charge of the Herald, Miss Darst was a constant contributor to the press of Circleville, and her poems, over the signature of "Kenneth," have been copied from their columns, and from the Standard of the Cross, The Modern Argo, and other papers into the leading literary journals of New York, Philadelphia, and cities of Canada. The Record of the Year, a magazine devoted to gathering the brightest articles from the newspapers to give them a permanent form, has included many of Miss Darst's productions in its pages.

As a journalist Miss Darst has endeavored to do her work thoroughly, to make a newspaper which should be interesting and reliable, and to ask no favors or concessions simply because it was the work of a lady. She was the special correspondent of, and not an infrequent writer of longer letters to, the Cincinnati Enquirer for a couple of years, and is at present employed by the Cincinnati Commercial. She has also been a contributor to the Columbus Herald, and other papers of the capital city. Editorial paragraphs from the Circleville Herald have been copied frequently by the press of the larger cities, and the financial plank of the Herald's platform --"there is no honest way to get a dollar but to earn one, and the dollar so earned should be so good a dollar that it buys a dollar's worth the world over" -- went the rounds of the New York, Chicago, and Cincinnati dailies.

Pages might be filled with the always cordial, but sometimes amusing, allusions of the editors of this State to the novel claimant for fraternal honors, but the some of them may be given in the appreciative words of the Springfield Republic: "If any one questions a woman's ability to run a newspaper, the answer is, Miss Lillie Darst."