Ansel Nash Kellogg, who has been called "The Father of the Newspaper Syndicate," is one of the forgotten persons in journalism history--a figure too often bypassed for the more colorful big-city editors and publishers of the 1800s. Yet throughout his career Kellogg did as much as anyone to revolutionize both the content offered and the content technological processes used by the rural, weekly press in America. Because of his work, thousands of weekly newspaper publishers were able for the first time, to offer their readers the syndicated matter previously reserved for the metropolitan dailies.

Kellogg was born in Reading, Pennsylvania. Little is known about his early years except that when he was too, the family moved to New York, where Kellogg was educated. After graduating second in his class from Columbia College in 1852, Kellogg spent one year studying in an architect's office. But being of a journalistic turn...