John Gilmer Speed (1853-1909) | WikiTree FREE Family Tree

John Gilmer Speed

Born Sep 1853 in Louisville, Jefferson, Kentucky, United States

Ancestors

Son of Philip Speed and Emma Frances (Keats) Speed

Brother of Mary Eliza (Speed) Tuley, George Keats Speed, Peachy Austine (Speed) Rodgers, Ella Keats (Speed) Crutcher, Alice Keats (Speed) McDonald, Fanny Henning (Speed) O'Connor, Thomas Adams Speed, Lucy Speed and Florence (Speed) McRoberts

Husband of Mary Craik (Poindexter) Speed — married 27 Jan 1881 (to 1897) in Jefferson, Kentucky, United States

Husband of Emma E. (Stutz) Daily — married 5 Dec 1904 (to before Jun 1905) in Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States

Descendants

Father of Eloise Gwathmey (Speed) Gray

Died 2 Feb 1909 at age 55 in Mendham, Morris, New Jersey, United States

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Profile last modified 23 Jan 2023 | Created 30 May 2022

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1 Biography
2 See Also
3 Sources

Biography

This profile is part of the Speed Name Study.

Early life (1853-1885)

John Gilmer Speed was born in Kentucky in 1853.^[1] He grew up in Louisville with nine siblings, his parents a Kentuckian banker and his wife.^[2] He was the great-nephew of John Keats.^[3]

By 1870, Speed worked as a civil engineer.^[4] He oversaw road and sewer projects.^[5] In 1876, he served an official role at the Centennial Exhibition, the first World's Fair held in the United States.^[6] In 1877, he switched career paths, accepting a staff position at the New York World.^[5] In 1879, he was promoted to managing editor.

In 1881, Speed married Mary Poindexter in Jefferson County.^[7] Soon after their marriage, the couple moved to Manhattan in New York. In 1882, they had a daughter there named Eloise.^[8] Speed stepped down from the World after it was sold in 1883.^[5]^[9] After his mother passed away in 1883,^[10] and Speed inherited original writings of Keats, he wrote and began publishing The Letters and Poems of John Keats, a three volume series.^[11]

An informed citizen and social journalist (1886-1899)

In 1886 and 1887, Speed served on the Board of Directors for the American Exhibition in London;^[12] some newspapers even attributed the idea for the exhibition to him.^[13] After the exhibition, Speed returned to editing; in 1888, he began editing The American Magazine.^[14]

In the 1890s, Speed rose to prominence in the world of news publishing. During this decade, he became a regular contributor to high profile publications such as Harper's Bazar,^[15]^[16] Harper's Weekly,^[17]^[18]^[19] Ladies Home Journal,^[20]^[21]^[22] Lippincott's Monthly Magazine,^[23]^[24] the New York Herald,^[25]^[26] and Women's Home Companion.^[27]^[28] While his first hit articles were about dogs,^[18]^[29]^[30]^[31] he quickly pivoted towards social issues such as the quality of roads,^[20]^[25] the welfare of agricultural^[17]^[32]^[33] and urban^[22]^[34]^[35] America, and warfare and its effects.^[26]^[27]^[36] During this decade, his articles were printed and reprinted over 600 times nationwide.^[37] He also edited Leslie's Weekly at the same time.^[38]

A premature end to everything (1897-1909)

The Speed family acquired a summer home in Mendham, New Jersey in the 1890s, which they frequented.^[39] After Mary's passing in 1897,^[40] Speed stepped down as editor of Leslie's Weekly^[38] and began renting out the summer home.^[41] He still visited the summer home and Mendham, even taking on a role with a fellow vacationer at a tunnel company working with the city for a while.^[42]

In the first half of the 1900s, Speed continued to contribute to Woman's Home Companion.^[43] He became increasingly interested in banks, the centralization of wealth, and everyday people's access to money, contributing articles on these topics to Ainslee's Magazine^[44]^[45]^[46] and Success.^[47]^[48] He wrote a story on purchased votes in New York City elections.^[49] He also started to became interested in horses, writing articles about them^[50] and taking on a semi-official role for the US government regarding the purchase of horses.^[51]

In 1904, Speed married Emma Stutz Daily, in Manhattan.^[52] They separated in 1905; Emma passed away later that year under suspicious circumstances.^[53] Speed stopped writing for the most part after their separation.

Speed took his own life in Mendham, New Jersey in 1909.^[54] He left behind his sole daughter, who had married in 1903 and moved to Hartford, Connecticut.^[55] He was interred at Hilltop Cemetery in Mendham.^[56]

Legacy

While considered a "clever writer and a critic of versatile powers" in his day,^[57] in the years soon after his death, only posthumously released articles on horses by and references to horse articles by Speed were printed.^[58]^[59] In our time, John Gilmer Speed is considered one of the original "muckrakers," journalists from the 1890s to the 1920s who exposed social issues and criticized social institutions in an often sensationalist way and whose calls for progress lend to the naming of the era as the Progressive Era.