Verdugo Views: Remembering The Ledger’s publisher
When Grace Carpenter passed away in 1971, the Glendale City Council adjourned in her honor, Supervisor Warren Dorn ordered the flag at the La Cañada branch of the Los Angeles County Library lowered to half-staff and joint resolutions by State Senator H.L. Richardson and Assemblyman Frank Lanterman were passed by the legislature to honor her memory.
Who was this woman and how did she earn this respect?
She owned a local newspaper.
She and her husband, Arthur, purchased a small neighborhood news sheet in 1928 and turned it into one of the leading suburban newspapers in the state.
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Born in 1888, Grace Tansill Carpenter, granddaughter of a man who at one time owned three newspapers, began her journalism career as a society reporter and Washington, D.C., correspondent for the New York Press.
She married Arthur Carpenter in 1910 and 10 years later, with three very young sons, they decided to leave the hubbub of Washington, D.C., behind and take up ranching in California.
They spent three months driving across the country in a Model T Ford, visiting national parks along the way. They found a house, on the grounds of Gould Castle in La Crescenta. Arthur Carpenter became the property’s caretaker, and Grace Carpenter went to work as a reporter for the brand new La Crescenta Valley Ledger in 1922.
The first edition of the La Crescenta Valley Ledger was published on Wednesday, Sept. 13, 1922, by Carroll Parcher. Yes, the same man who later published the Glendale News-Press.
Along with coverage of the Improvement Club’s meeting and an article about the 200 students flooding into the grammar school, were these words: “The La Crescenta Valley is growing. Homes are springing up almost over night. New acreage is being placed on the market and developed every week.”
Whether or not Grace Carpenter was involved in that first edition, she certainly was on board soon after, as she began working at the paper in 1922, according to June Dougherty’s “Sources of History, La Crescenta.”
After six weeks, Parcher’s Ledger merged with the Record of the Verdugo Hills, founded in 1920 by Wallace M. Morgan. The new publication became the Record Ledger, serving the entire Verdugo Hills District: La Cañada, Montrose, La Crescenta, Tujunga and present-day Sunland, according to Arthur Cobery, writing in the Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley Ledger, March 2016.
For a few months, until a linotype machine and cylinder press were installed in their Tujunga shop, type was set in Glendale and then taken to Tujunga to be made up into page forms, Cobery wrote. The page forms were then loaded into a car and returned to a printing plant back in Glendale.
The Record Ledger lasted three years. Then, in September 1925, the Crescenta Valley Ledger was born.
The Carpenters purchased the Ledger in 1928. Arthur Carpenter took charge of the mechanical side of the newspaper, while Grace Carpenter was “publisher, reporter and advertising manager,” Cobery noted. “On other occasions, she acted as proofreader and telephone operator. And, last but not least, she was homemaker for three hungry males.”
The newspaper, later renamed the Ledger, continued to grow along with the community. By 1972, the paper had 165 employees. More about the Carpenters at a later date.
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To the Readers
The Carpenter family left a priceless legacy, according to Arthur Cobery, writing in the Crescenta Valley’s historical society newsletter. “Copies of the old Ledgers provide a treasure trove of history relating to the beginnings and growth of the Crescenta Valley,” he wrote.
More than 20 years ago, bound copies of the Ledger, from 1929 to 1978, were placed in a storage room at Glendale’s Central Library on Harvard Street. Cobery was instrumental in having them microfilmed about 15 years ago.
The microfilms are only available at the Glendale Central Library, according to Jo Anne Sadler, past president of the historical society, in an email.
“They were partially available at the La Cañada Library but they did away with the microfilm reader last year,” she wrote. “When the new La Crescenta Library opened a couple of years back, they decided not to have a microfilm reader available and virtually no local history section.”
Now, the historical society — with Fred Hoeptner as lead — and the Friends of La Crescenta Library, along with the Los Angeles County Public Library System, are coordinating an effort to digitize the Ledger, which will then be available to anyone by computer through the county library’s website. About $15,000 to $20,000 is needed to complete the project.
For more information or to donate to this cause contact Hoeptner at fredhep@earthlink.net.
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KATHERINE YAMADA can be reached at katherineyamada@gmail.com or by mail at Verdugo Views, c/o News-Press, 202 W. First St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. Please include your name, address and phone number.
