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recorded by the U.S. consul in Paris, who had been appointed by Cleveland. Although Pulitzer could sign the birth certificate, he was incapable of reading or other writing. To cope with his increasing infirmity, he hired thirty-year-old Claude Ponsonby, an Englishman who had some noble relatives. Ponsonby would be the first in a long succession of young men who would handle Pulitzer’s correspondence, read aloud to him, play the piano, and provide companionship as the world darkened around him.

Photographic Insert

Migrating Jewish families found economic opportunity in Makó, the Hungarian farming village where Joseph Pulitzer was born in 1847. Landowners, eager for the services of merchants and tradesmen, enlisted the newcomers to market the products of their estates. Members of the Paskesz family, whose business may be seen on the right-hand side of this nineteenth-century photo, later migrated to the United States and opened a Kosher confectionery in Brooklyn.

Pulitzer was devoted to his mother, Elize, seen here with his sister Anna, who died not long after the photograph was taken. In fact, all but one of his eight siblings died before Pulitzer reached his teenage years.

Merchant shops of Makó. (Courtesy of the Muriel Pulitzer Estate.) Pulitzer’s mother and sister. (Courtesy of the Muriel Pulitzer Estate.)

Joseph Pulitzer’s four-year-younger brother, Albert, was a consummate reader, idealistic, and ambitious. In 1867, with a twenty-dollar coin tucked under his shirt in a tiny cotton bag hung around his neck, Albert sailed for the United States and joined his brother in St. Louis.

This rare moment of brotherly togetherness was probably captured by a New York photographer in the spring of 1873. Joseph visited Albert on his way to Europe after selling his shares in the Westliche Post. Albert had just started working at the New York Herald.

Albert Pulitzer standing with books. (Courtesy of the Muriel Pulitzer Estate.) Joseph and Albert in 1873. (Courtesy of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Joseph Pulitzer Family.)

German immigrant and American politician Carl Schurz was a role model for Pulitzer in St. Louis.

Pulitzer followed Schurz into the Liberal Republican movement. When the rebellion was defeated, Schurz returned to the Republican Party, but Pulitzer became a Democrat.

Carl Schurz. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress.) Pulitzer Liberal Republican cartoon. (Author’s collection.)

With his success as a reporter and the additional income he earned as a state legislator, Pulitzer improved his dress by 1869 when this photograph was taken.

During his term as a state legislator, Pulitzer’s notorious temper got the best of him and he tried to shoot a lobbyist. The scene was captured by well-known cartoonist Joseph Keppler.

Pulitzer profile 1869. (Courtesy of the Muriel Pulitzer Estate.) Cartoon of Pulitzer in fight with lobbyist that appeared in the February 5, 1870 edition of Die Vehme. (Courtesy of the Missouri History Museum.)

(Above 1st)By the mid-1870s, Pulitzer added facial hair to his look. In 1878, he courted two women while living in Washington, D.C. Kate Davis(above 2nd) and Nannie Tunstall(above). In the end, Tunstall spurned Pulitzer’s affections, and he married Davis. The drawing of Tunstall was done by sculptor Moses J. Ezekiel.

Joseph Pulitzer and Kate Davis. (Courtesy of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Joseph Pulitzer Family.) Nannie Tunstall. (Courtesy of the Virginia Military Institute Archives.)

In December 1878, Pulitzer purchased the St. Louis Dispatch at a bankruptcy sale on the steps of the courthouse. In this cartoon Pulitzer is seen packing up his new paper a few days later to merge it with the St. Louis Post, a move alluded to in the comment “set the whole up on a sound Post,” at the center of the drawing. The cartoon appeared in the German-language Die Laterne.

Within a year of creating the Post-Dispatch, Pulitzer persuaded John Cockerill to come to St. Louis to take charge of the news operation of the paper. The two men met at