Pueblo County Biographies

Pueblo County, Colorado
DR. ANDREW Y. HULL

Contributed by Karen Mitchell.

To successfully edit a newspaper in Colorado requires unusual tact and ability. In the Eastern States, where the country is thickly settled and scores of journals are published on every hand; where sensations are frequent, and innumerable news items are floating on every breeze, the average writer can have no great difficulty in gathering material for a weekly or a daily. But in the New West, far from the center of the journalistic world, where the country is sparsely populated, where the towns are many miles apart, and but few newspapers are published for hundreds of miles around, the reporter must sweep clean for his locals, and the editor-in-chief must ransack his brain and clear the eastern sky for his editorials. Dr. A. Y. Hull is widely known in Southern Colorado, as, for a number of years, the able and esteemed editor of the Pueblo Democrat, which he himself founded, and continued to April 27, last, and the writer of this takes peculiar pleasure in noting his career. The Doctor is by nativity an Ohioan. He was born in Highland County, Ohio, July 28, 1818. He received an average academical education, and, at the age of twenty, began the study of medicine, pursuing his first studies mainly at Frankfort, Ohio. He took lectures at the Ohio Medical College, Cincinnati, and received his diploma from that institution March 2, 1841. He then located at Bourneville, Ohio, where he lived and practiced his profession for more than eight years. He was married, at Frankfort, Ohio, August 17, 1847, to Miss M. E. Tiffin, a niece of Dr. Edward Tiffin, first Governor of Ohio. In September, 1849, the Doctor removed to Des Moines, Iowa. For a time he practiced medicine there, and dealt in real estate, but, tiring of medicine, he decided to study law, which he did, and was admitted to the bar at Des Moines. He was elected to the State Senate of Iowa, in 1861. In 1863, he took an active part in procuring the removal of the State capital from Iowa City to Des Moines. During the late war, he was a strong Union man, but was opposed to the war and took no part in it. In 1866, on account of the failing health of Mrs. Hull, the Doctor removed to Sedalia, Mo. In 1868, he took charge as editor and business manager of the Sedalia Democrat, a daily and weekly paper. He entered upon his editorial career at a time when the Democracy of Missouri was in the minority, owing to the disfranchisement of the ex-rebels, and fierce was the war he made upon the dominant party. In 1876, still having in view the restoration of his wife's yet impaired health, Dr. Hull disposed of his interests at Sedalia and removed to Pueblo, Colo., where he has since resided. He started the Pueblo Democrat, a semi-weekly paper, March 1, 1877. Since then it has been continued, part of the time as a daily and part as a weekly, and has ever been strong in its advocacy of Democracy. The Democrat is now owned by the Hull Brothers, sons of Dr. Hull, and, since April 27, 1881, Dr. Hull then resigning, has been under the editorial management of Col. David R. Murray. Having arrived at that age where men naturally require rest and retirement, Dr. Hull has bade adieu to public life. He retires with honors, and to the regret of many admirers. He has interests at Pueblo and will make his future home at that place. History of the Arkansas Valley, Colorado O L Baskin & Co., Chicago, 1881

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