`

Nebraska Authors

Richard Lee Metcalfe

Born 1861-10-11 Upper Alton, IL (USA)

Died 1954-03-31

Journalist and close associate of William Jennings Bryan. Metcalfe came to Omaha, Nebraska in 1887 and worked for the Omaha Bee and later the Omaha World-Herald newspapers. When World-Herald owner and Bryan supporter Gilbert Hitchcock decided to appoint William Jennings Bryan as the newspaper's editor-in-chief in 1894, it was Melcalfe, the paper's sometime Washington correspondent, who worked up Bryan's notes into editorials that were published under Bryan's name. Metcalfe succeeded Bryan as editor when Bryan left in 1896. Metcalfe wrote campaign biographies of Bryan for the 1896 and 1900 campaigns (considerable tomes at about 500 pages), and left the World Herald in 1905 to become Associate Editor of Bryan's newspaper The Commoner, published in Lincoln. When Bryan was appointed Secretary of State in the Woodrow Wilson administration, he had Metcalfe appointed Governor of the Canal Zone in Panama, where he served briefly. Metcalfe later ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate (twice) and once for Nebraska Governor. He was appointed mayor of Omaha in 1929, on the death of the incumbent, and was re-elected to that office once. Before WW II, he joined Brandeis Department Stores as advertising manager.

See also journalist Will Maupin.

dsc

Places Lived

Omaha, NE
Lincoln, NE
Panama Canal Zone
Washington, DC

Author Of

  • Biography
  • Fiction
  • Journalism

Keywords

Newspaper Journalism; Democratic Politics; Populism

Occupation

Journalist
Newspaper Editor
Advertising

Places Worked

Omaha Bee
Omaha World-Herald
Brandeis Department Stores

Associations

William Jennings Bryan
Will Maupin
Charles Bryan
Gilbert Hitchcock

Bibliography

Life and Patriotic Services of Hon. William J. Bryan. 1896. (Cover title: "Bryan, Sewall and free silver")
Victorious Democracy: Embracing Life and Patriotic Services of Hon. William J. Bryan. 1900. (Cover title: "Democratic Issues of 1900")
Of Such Is the Kingdom: And Other Stories From Life. 1907. (numerous editions with slightly varying subtitles)
"Bishop Sunbeams": And Other Stories of Service. 1909.

We appreciate corrections and additions to our information about authors, but please read the following guidelines and caveats carefully.

  • The Nebraska Authors database is based on publicly available sources. Unless you are the author contacting us in person, it helps us if you cite the source or sources of your information. We cannot include unsourced information in the database.
  • We may be appreciative of information we choose not to include in the publicly available database.
  • To include an image on an author profile, please send jpg attachment to nebraskaauthors@lincoln.ne.gov. A photo-release agreement is required before the image will be published on this site.
  • Because of the way we are staffed, expect corrections or additions to take time, sometimes up to three months.
  • While we initially included some actual links to external URLs in the database, we will in the future no longer provide functioning links. We will instead record the presence of specific external materials in language that we hope will help intelligent users find it themselves. Web rot, in which actual materials remain online but undergo changes in their URLs, is too demanding in terms of staff time for us to hope to keep external links current.

Please copy, fill out the form below, and email it to heritage@lincoln.ne.gov to suggest a change.

/
Richard Lee Metcalfe
richard-lee-metcalfe

Do you have corrections for the above information or other information to add?:

(e.g. Author is buried in Fremont, not in David City / Also wrote for the Daily Nebraskan during her time as a student)