Several years ago, the newspaper I work for, the Grand Island Independent in Grand Island, Nebraska put together a beautiful book celebrating the city’s sesquicentennial. As I flitted through its pages, I was drawn to the story of Maggie Mobley, one of the paper’s first publishers in the late 1800s.
There are two things about her that captured my attention: She once took a bullwhip from her skirts and smacked the hat off of a rival publisher after he tried to avoid her at a town meeting, and after she left the paper, she was admitted to an asylum in Lincoln, NE wherein she sent letters to Nebraska newspapers detailing the appalling conditions within, as if she’d taken a page from Nellie Bly.
I wish I could find any editorials written by Maggie but the section of our morgue where those are archived is in quite a delicate state and I was afraid of disturbing the fragile paper too much.
Maggie came to America from Limerick, Ireland in 1849 when she was just three. By the age of 16 she was already a full-time teacher. She met Seth Mobley, married him and they moved to North Platte, Nebraska where they began publishing the Platte Valley Independent.
In her obituary, a fellow journalist described her writing as “virile, sharp,and witty.” Her editorials attracted attention all over the state. She earned quite a few enemies with her editorials, especially after the Platte Valley Independent moved to Grand Island.
One nemesis was J.L. Wiley, who published a temperance paper out of the Independent’s building but soon took his business elsewhere when his relationship with Maggie and her husband became strained.
This is my favorite part of the story: That tension between Wylie and Mobley reached the breaking point when, as he tried to avoid running into Maggie at a town meeting in January, 1873, she produced a bullwhip from the folds of her skirt and used it to snap Wylie’s hat to the floor. The headline for the incident? “COWHIDED” on page 3. I would give anything to find that particular entry in our archives.
Maggie and Seth Mobley divorced in 1884 and The Grand Island Daily Independent was sold. Several years later, Maggie was admitted to the State Insane Asylum. No records can be found of her release but it’s believed that she was only in for a short time.
There were questions about why she was there. From inside the asylum, Maggie wrote a letter to the Omaha Bee describing the terrible conditions inside. That letter caused a sensation in Nebraska and an investigation was conducted by a committee of the State Legislature.
The speculation is that she was following in the footsteps of fellow journalist, Nellie Bly who caused her own sensation in New York four years before Maggie was admitted.
After her discharge, Maggie wrote a number of letters to different newspapers throughout the state describing some of the horrid conditions she encountered. Conditions such as electric shock therapy carried out by the superintendent, “doctors” and servants at the facility.
In November of 1894, Maggie presented a lecture titled, “A Peep Behind the Curtain of our Public Institutions.”
Maggie died on February 10, 1907 at the age of 61.
I’ve been working at The Independent for 11 years now, and I’ve always felt a weird kinship with Maggie, a woman in the Midwest who forged her own path, and apparently carried a bullwhip around with her. I love that.
Addendum
I shared this post and last night received a comment from a local historian who told me she had a folder full of stuff about Maggie and did I want her to bring it in. OF COURSE I DID! So I’ve just spent a lovely 45 minutes with Edith Robbins, a wonderful German lady who has lived in Hall County for a long time and who spends her free time researching the roots of this area of the Midwest. Here are some photos of some of her clippings regarding Maggie:
