About J.C. & Jessie

Who were J.C. and Jessie Seacrest?

J.C. and Jessie Seacrest’s philosophy of community service is at the core of the J.C. and Jessie Seacrest Family Foundation. Throughout his life, J.C. expected his family to work hard, become educated, and, most importantly, to contribute to the public good. It is these values we strive to embody as a family foundation today.

From the beginning, Joseph Claggett Seacrest had journalism in his blood. He was born in his grandfather’s house, in southern Pennsylvania to Jacob and Emma Seacrest. His father was a farmer and owner of a small sawmill. Later in life, Joseph would go by “J.C.” but as a boy, he was known simply as “Cleg.”

When his father Jacob died suddenly, it fell upon young J.C. to financially support his mother and four siblings. In 1878, when J.C. was just 13 years old, he began an apprenticeship with his Uncle B.F. Winger, an attorney and owner of the Greencastle Press in Greencastle, Pennsylvania. While learning the newspaper trade as a so-called “printer’s devil,” J.C. received free room and board, plus 50 cents a week. J.C. always regretted his lack of formal education, and encouraged all his children to attend college.

In his early 20’s, J.C. made his way west, arriving in Lincoln, Nebraska on April Fool’s Day, 1887. Two weeks later, he started working at the Nebraska State Journal soliciting subscriptions out of the building on the northeast corner of 9th and P streets for $15 a week. J.C. was soon promoted to police reporter, a role the young journalist relished. “There were plenty of thrills in accompanying the police on their raids and smashing gambling paraphernalia,” he said at the time.

In the 1880s, there were 26 newspapers and other periodicals being published in Lincoln. Not intimidated by this hypercompetitive environment, J.C. quit the Journal three times to pursue his passion of owning his own newspaper. In 1888, J.C. leased the circulation list of the Daily Call, but went broke when readers failed to pay their subscriptions. The next year, he started a penny paper called the Daily Globe. It failed in under three months. Undeterred, he started the Sunday Globe in 1889. It too went out of business in short order.

After his publishing failures, J.C. returned to the Journal as business manager, quickly bolstering the paper’s circulation up to 10,000 and bringing in new ad revenue. Impressed with young J.C.’s ambition, his boss Charles H. Gere sold J.C. a quarter interest in the State Journal Company for $40,000 — a huge sum at the time.

In 1892 J. C. married Jessie Snively, and the couple moved to 1624 A Street, in Lincoln. On July 17, 1894, J.C. and Jessie Seacrest’s first child, Frederick Snively, was born, followed by Joseph Winger on Oct. 23, 1895. Their third child, Jessie, was born May 15, 1905.

The year J.C. and Jessie married coincided with the beginning of an economic recession. Sensing an opportunity, J.C. and a consortium of six other Lincolnites started buying local streetcar companies that had begun to fail, including the Lincoln Street Railway Co. At the end of the economic downturn, the syndicate sold their streetcar holdings. J.C.’s portion totaled between $150,000 and $200,000 — about $6 million in 2022 dollars.

In 1905, J.C. used the proceeds from the streetcar sale to purchase 23 acres of cornfields at 33rd and South streets, then the rural edge of Lincoln. J.C. and Jessie built an 11-room colonial mansion dubbed “Wayside” on the acreage. The Normal Streetcar Line ran through the property, and as J.C. was on the firm’s board, he had a small depot/passenger shelter built near Wayside and named it “Antelope,” the site of modern day Antelope Park.

At the time, newspapers were not particularly concerned with objectivity. Instead, they mingled news, editorial and advertising in ways that were suprising, even compated to the modern media landscape. When J.C. became publisher of the Journal after Charles Gere’s death in 1904, he insisted on higher standards. “J.C. was greatly concerned that the newspaper should be one of the best possible – telling all the news fearlessly, without favor, standing up for things that were highest and best,” Anne Longman, a Journal feature writer wrote of her boss.

By 1922, J.C. had acquired the stock of the Journal’s previous owners, placing majority control with a single individual for the first time. During his time as a serial entrepreneur and publisher, J.C. was associated with dozens of different news outlets, including specialty publications like The Independent Farmer, Poultry Topics, Western Swine Breeder, and the Nebraska Ruralist. For a brief period in 1893, J.C. even published The Defender, a paper geared toward Civil War veterans.

Despite his success in business, J.C. always retained his simple living habits, droll sense of humor and trademark Seacrest eccentricity. In one apocryphal scene, as J.C. emerged from an editorial cubicle, he bumped into a desk, tearing his jacket. He stopped, called for a maintenance man, and had the offending corner sawed off on the spot as a warning not to mess with the boss.

In December 1935, J.C. established the J.C. Seacrest Trust. It’s opening paragraphs read, “A newspaper is more than merely a manufacturing or merchandising proposition; a reasonable ownership is essential if a newspaper is to serve the public unselfishly.” It was important to J.C. that 15% of the trust earnings be distributed to charitable causes. Over the years, the trust has funded investments ranging from Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital to the University of Nebraska School of Journalism.

J.C. died on April 21, 1942. On the day of his funeral, the offices of the Journal had to close early, as his former employees packed First Plymouth Church to pay their respects. The minister stated that because Mr. Seacrest had been a builder, he had chosen 1 Corinthians: 3-10: “By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it. But each one should build with care. For no one can lay any foundation, other than the one already laid.”