From the desk of Nikki Chiampa

The Centralia Daily Hub began as an Independent newspaper on September 29, 1913 with editor George A. Dew and publisher Madison “Elsy” Ellsworth Cue at the helm. The other publisher of the paper was the Hub Printing Company, Inc., an enterprise of which Cue was president. The Daily Hub was issued every afternoon with the exception of Sundays, reporting on both international and local news. Within a year of its inception, circulation of the paper had risen to approximately 1,141 issues, with distribution in Centralia and surrounding towns. During this time, Dew left his post at the paper and was succeeded by Victor Jackson. When Jackson left the paper in 1915, Cue ended up taking on the editorial role as well.

Significant events, including WW1, Women’s Suffrage, and Prohibition initially appeared as headlines on the front page. As time wore on, however, the newspaper shifted its focus to cover more socially inclined news on a local scale. The Daily Hub often took on a moral stance and eschewed objective reporting in its articles. When referring to the “drys,” those fighting for Prohibition, the paper describes the group as the “better element of this city.” In contrast, it berates the “clique” of local bankers and businessmen, declaring that these men defrauded the city during Centralia’s financial crisis of 1914. The Daily Hub remained righteous even when the topic was not political, expressing outrage at provocative movie posters on display at a local theater. The paper claims that “those whose mission it is to uplift, protest, and help to a better living” were being careless and slothful with their duties.

By its third year of publication, The Daily Hub was boasting of its “clear conscience” and the enemies it has gained, labeling their opponents as the “lawless and predatory” populace of Centralia. However, staff of The Daily Hub were not immune to the consequences of their antagonism. In one case, Vera Reynolds, a staff writer, was arraigned in court for libel. She alleged in one of her articles that prosecuting attorney Chester Alan Studebaker and Sheriff Thomas C. Foster were “laid out” by Frank Nehring, whom they were attempting to arrest. Even The Daily Hub’s publisher, M.E. Cue, was tried in court multiple times and charged in 1916 for throwing a pig of linotype metal at Joe Lucas, a local theater manager.

After only five years and with 2,228 papers in circulation, The Daily Hub officially ceased publication on March 30, 1918. It was succeeded by The Centralia Evening Hub, which ran for the month of April that same year. Immediately thereafter, it transformed into the Republican paper, The Centralia Daily Hub, which was issued from May 1, 1918 until publication was suspended on April 10, 1919. During these rapid changes, M.E. Cue and his company remained as publishers up to the final issue of the paper’s demise. Although the Centralia Daily Hub announced plans to return from its “sabbatical,” it had no successors.

The Centralia Daily Hub along with many other early Washington newspapers can be found on our Washington Digital Newspapers website.

From the desk of Steve Willis, Central Library Services Program Manager of the Washington State Library:

The random news for this installment was discovered in The Daily Hub (Centralia, Wash.), February 26, 1916. The following ghost story was top of the fold front page news:

CENTRALIA HAS VERY GENUINE HA’NTED HOUSE

Ghostly Manifestations Defy Solution In Spite of Family’s Best Efforts– Spirit Is Apparently Friendly

 Centralia has a haunted house.

 This piece of news may be a bit startling to those who always connect haunted houses with old, old mansions with a past of bloody deeds to cover, and they naturally inquire where in Centralia can be found a house that answers this description.

 The answer is that there is no such house.

 Centralia’s haunted house is modern in every respect and is inhabited by as peaceable, sociable and jolly a family as you could ask to meet. Neither are they a family given to becoming frightened at the noise of a mouse scuttling across the pantry floor or a board squeaking as the house sways to the spring winds.

No, the Kaestners are wholesome, sociable, unafraid folks and when they finally, after many manifestations admitted to close friends that certain things were transpiring about their home on Waunch Prairie that could not be accounted for under ordinary rules governing human agency and action, the admission had considerable weight that it held up under searching investigation. 

 But the strangest part of the “hant” that has taken up abode at the Kaestner residence is that it is a sociable and also liberal ghost. Unlike the ghost of fiction, it does not believe in needlessly scaring people, neither does it believe in taking away– in fact the Kaestner ghost’s actions bear more resemblance to the gyrations indulged in by Santa Claus than to the work of a soul-terrifying spirit.

 Now to get to the real story:

 About a week ago Mrs. Kaestner went home after a shopping trip down town, unlocked the door and went in. The cheerful singing of a tea kettle attracted her to the kitchen where she found a merry fire burning in the range– and not a soul on the place. Later, when the family assembled for supper she mentioned the occurrence, but each member of the family stoutly denied having started the range fire. This passed without comment, but next day Fred Kaestner took a heavy room rug out on the lawn to clean for his mother. He left it out to air while he did some chores and when he later folded it up to take in, there underneath the rug was a bright new one dollar currency note. This was talked over and it was finally decided that the bill had been dropped by some passer and not noticed when the rug was thrown out on the lawn for cleaning.

 The next visitation of this philanthropic ghost came the next evening. Mrs. Kaestner had gathered the eggs and left them on the screened back porch. Going out shortly after to get some eggs for supper she found, lying on top of the egg basket a nicely folded absolutely new and unwrinkled necktie that had every appearance of having come direct from some good store.

 Things began to look decidedly queer by this time and when the next afternoon the phonograph in the front room started to play with all of the family either out or in another part of the house, Mrs. Kaestner was forced to admit that she was becoming nervous to say the least. This action of the phonograph, however, seemed to have appeared to the friendly ghost as a bit out of its line, for the very next day while Mrs. Kaestner was sweeping the back walk she spied in the grass close to the walk a new $2 currency note.

 As has been intimated and as everyone knows who has the pleasure of their acquaintance, the Kaestners are not people to become stampeded into accepting any ghost stories or fooled by some easily explained prank, but, in spite of a careful investigation, watching and search they have been unable to explain the series of happenings related.

 In the meantime Mr. Kaestner has taken the bills to the bank and found that they are absolutely good, so he is patiently and hopefully awaiting the next visitation.

 Max (1851-1909) and Anna Kaestner (1862-1948) with their young son Frederick Frank “Fritz” Kaestner (1881-1947) came to the United States from their native Germany in 1887. Max had been a lieutenant of artillery in the German army. Initially they moved to Colorado but in 1889 set up home in Centralia, Washington. In a short time the Kaestner family had a reputation as running one of the most sanitary and progressive dairies in the area.

When Max died at age 58, several years before the above story took place, he had become very well known in Centralia. One obituary stated, “Mr. Kaestner was a man of sterling character, a man who held strong opinions, and was probably one of the most highly educated men in the county having received the best instruction obtainable in Germany.”

Fritz Kaestner continued to run the dairy for a few decades. If there was a follow-up story about who was jerking this family’s chain in 1916, I’d love to see it.