Samuel Hay Kauffmann.
HE TAUGHT GEN. THOMAS T. ECKERT TELEGRAPHY
Samuel Hay Kauffmann, of Washington, D. C., an old-time telegrapher, was born in Wayne County, O., in 1829. He commenced telegraphing in 1848, on the Wade and Speed lines, first at Wooster and then at Zanesville, O., as chief operator and manager, respectively, remaining in the service for six years.
Before being transferred from Wooster to Zanesville, he taught the “science of dots and dashes” to Gen. Thomas T. Eckert, now president of the Western Union Telegraph Company, who succeeded Mr. Kauffmann in the office at Wooster.
When Mr. Kauffmann gave up telegraphing, as above indicated, he returned to the newspaper business in Zanesville. Except for a time in the Civil Service of the United States Government, he has ever since been connected with journalism—
for the past thirty-four years with the “Evening Star,” of Washington, D. C., and nearly all that time he has been and still is president of the company that publishes it. He is also president of the American Newspaper Publishers Association (incorporated in New York) and of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, in Washington. He has been an extensive traveler, and is regarded as something of a patron of literature and art. He is a member of the National Geographic Society, the Philosophical Society, the Anthropological Society, the Old Time Telegraphers' and Historical Society, the Literary Society, and the Cosmos and Chevy Chase Clubs, of Washington, and the National Sculpture Society, and the Grolier and the Arts Clubs, of New York. Mr. Kauffmann was the first person to suggest and urge the establishment of the National Museum at Washington, which institution as is known, now comprises one of the most important and interesting collections of its class in existence anywhere.