Masters Theses
Date of Award
12-1980
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science
Major
Communication
Major Professor
June N. Adamson
Abstract
Adolph Ochs began his newspaper career as a carrier for the Knoxville Chronicle in Knoxville, Tennessee. At his death sixty-four years later, in 1935, he was one of the wealthiest and most influential publishers in the world. His empire comprised not only the New York Times, which he had taken from near collapse to phenomenal success, but the Chattanooga Times, books, magazines, scholarly journals and reference works, wire services, as well as extensive real estate holdings in New York. His brothers, George and Milton, who had also been Chronicle carriers in nineteenth-century Knoxville, shared in that success, as did many other members of the Ochs family. A description of the beginning of that remarkable newspaper career in Knoxville and a profile of an equally remarkable family while it lived in that Tennessee city is the purpose of this study.
The study concentrates, first, on the head of the clan, Julius Ochs, whose penchant for unprofitable business affairs caused the family to settle in Knoxville. His lack of success was behind the amazing achievements of his eldest son, Adolph, whom he described as the "salvation" of the family. Julius and his wife, Bertha, were German Jewish immigrants to America in the 1840s. Julius spent his early life in this country as a peddler in the southeast while Bertha was reared a pampered southern belle in Natchez, Mississippi. After their marriage, the couple lived briefly in Knoxville before the Civil War. During the war, the two suffered tense moments as advocates of opposite sides in the conflict--Bertha of the Confederacy and Julius of the Union.
IV
This familial division may have been the reason the family returned to Knoxville after the war, as it was a city "equally divided" in sympathy between North and South. Julius was the leading merchant in the city after the war until falling prices and an overload of stock bought for his dry goods store at inflated wartime rates forced Julius Ochs & Co. into ruin. The family was plagued for the next decade by lawsuits of angry creditors against the firm, and Julius Ochs' only income throughout the period was from his office as a Knox County Court member, the small insurance business he ran, and his sons' newspaper routes. Before the family left Knoxville permanently, their personal household goods were sold at auction to settle debts with former close friends, along with fellow Jews.
It was Adolph Ochs' move to Chattanooga, where he purchased controlling interest in the ailing Chattanooga Times in 1878, that enabled the troubled family to extricate itself from difficulties in Knoxville and move to Chattanooga. Adolph had been office boy and printer's devil for the Chronicle and put the knowledge gained there to use in his new enterprise to make it a success. Adolph and his family became leading citizens of Chattanooga, but Julius always regretted his failures in Knoxville. It was Chattanooga and not Knoxville where Adolph Ochs chose to build his empire. Knoxville held many painful memories for the young man, and, though he maintained friendships with former colleagues there, he regarded Knoxville as "too narrow" a place to found a publishing career. He always regarded himself as a southerner and a Tennessean, but Chattanooga was the city to which the highly successful publisher of the New York Times ultimately gave his allegiance.
V
This familial division may have been the reason the family returned to Knoxville after the war, as it was a city "equally divided" in sympathy between North and South. Julius was the leading merchant in the city after the war until falling prices and an overload of stock bought for his dry goods store at inflated wartime rates forced Julius Ochs & Co. into ruin. The family was plagued for the next decade by lawsuits of angry creditors against the firm, and Julius Ochs' only income throughout the period was from his office as a Knox County Court member, the small insurance business he ran, and his sons' newspaper routes. Before the family left Knoxville permanently, their personal household goods were sold at auction to settle debts with former close friends, along with fellow Jews.
It was Adolph Ochs' move to Chattanooga, where he purchased controlling interest in the ailing Chattanooga Times in 1878, that enabled the troubled family to extricate itself from difficulties in Knoxville and move to Chattanooga. Adolph had been office boy and printer's devil for the Chronicle and put the knowledge gained there to use in his new enterprise to make it a success. Adolph and his family became leading citizens of Chattanooga, but Julius always regretted his failures in Knoxville.
It was Chattanooga and not Knoxville where Adolph Ochs chose to build his empire. Knoxville held many painful memories for the young man, and, though he maintained friendships with former colleagues there, he regarded Knoxville as "too narrow" a place to found a publishing career. He always regarded himself as a southerner and a Tennessean, but Chattanooga was the city to which the highly successful publisher of the New York Times ultimately gave his allegiance.
Recommended Citation
Gilbert, Susan, "The Ochs Family in Knoxville, Tennessee. " Master's Thesis, University of Tennessee, 1980.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/6356