Can anyone tell me if there are any sources that would have archives of the Oakland City
Enterprise. Specifically I am looking for an obituary or any other article relating to the
death of it's founder Nicholas Anderson Spillman. He was the son of Samuel Spillman
and Martha Hanks. He died 14NOV1894. I have the following references regarding Nicholas
Spillman.
Thanks
Ron Hanks
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"HISTORY OF GIBSON COUNTY INDIANA HER PEOPLE, INDUSTRIES AND INSTITUTIONS" BY
GIL R. STORMONT
1914 B. F. BOWEN & CO, Inc. Indianapolis, Indiana, pages 130-131.
On July 3, 1880, the Oakland City Enterprise made its first appearance, with Nicholas A.
Spillman as editor and proprietor. Mr. Spillman was a practical printer and an
industrious, hustling newspaper man, and he soon had the Enterprise on a solid financial
footing. Mr. Spillman died in1894 and the publication of the Enterprise was continued by
Briggs Kepley, for a few years. The paper was not able to maintain the prestige given it
by Mr. Spillman and was finally suspended and the outfit was removed to Petersburg.
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History of Gibson County, Indiana page 218 (Tartts??)
N. A. Spillman
Editor and proprietor of the Oakland Enterprise, was born in Gibson County, Indiana,
Sept. 25, 1853. The Spillmans on the paternal side are of German descent. Samuel K.
Spillman, the father of the subject of the following sketch, came to Gibson County at an
early day. He was a physician and practiced medicine in Columbia Township. When the war
broke out he enlisted in Company G, of the Fifty-eighth Regiment Indiana Volunteer
Infantry. He entered as a private and rose through the intermediate grades to captain of
the company. During his term of service he contracted chronic diarrhea and was honorably
discharged from the service on account of the disease, in the latter part of 1862, and
died from its effects the following year. He married Martha Hanks, a native of Warrick
County, Ind. She still survives her husband and is a resident of this county. Nicholas A.
is the eldest of three children. He was reared in the county. His education in his youth
was limited and closed wit!
h his eighth year. He followed various pursuits up until his sixteenth year. At that
period he went to Princeton and apprenticed himself to the printer's trade. He served
three years on newspaper work and four years learning job work in the office of the
Clarion. After that time he worked in different offices in the county and at Evansville.
The greater portion of the time, nearly four years, he was in the Democrat office in
Princeton. On the 3rd day of July 1880, he went to Oakland and established the Oakland
Enterprise, which he still continues to edit and publish. He is a Republican in politics,
but his paper is independent in tone.
On the 20th of December 1878, he was united in wedlock to Miss Mary Coleman, a native
of Tennessee, but a resident of Princeton at the time of her marriage. Three children have
been born to them whose names, in the order of their birth, are: - Arthur K., Carl C. and
Nettie Maud Spillman. He is a member of the Masonic Order and holds membership with
Oakland City Lodge, No. 467, and the beneficiary order of A. O. U. W., Princeton Lodge No.
76.