William Rockhill Nelson

William Rockhill Nelson (March 7, 1841 – April 13, 1915) was an American real estate developer, journalist, editor and co-founder of The Kansas City Star in Kansas City, Missouri. He donated his estate (and home) for the establishment of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Nelson was honored, for a time, as one of the most progressive city editors in the country. He crusaded for community improvement while retaining conservative, small-town values.

Upon his death, A. S. Ochs, publisher of the New York Times, said, “Journalism has lost one of its best examples of the right kind of independence, courage, ability, and enterprise.”

He is buried at Mt. Washington Cemetery in Independence, Missouri, with his wife, daughter and son-in-law.

In early 2021, after a series investigating its own history of how it covered — and failed to cover — Black Kansas Citians, the Kansas City Star “stripped from its pages and website the name, words and image that recognized its first publisher and founder, William Rockhill Nelson.”

Early life
Nelson was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana. His father was publisher Isaac De Groff Nelson (1810–1891) and his mother was Elizabeth Rockhill (1816–1889), the daughter of William R. Rockhill, an important farmer and politician in Fort Wayne, Indiana. For a short time, Isaac Nelson owned The Sentinel newspaper (which became the Fort Wayne News Sentinel). But I.D.G. Nelson, as he was fondly known for many years in Fort Wayne, was much more renowned as a nursery owner. His own estate, "Elm Park", was considered "the showplace of Allen County."

Nelson, as a 15-year-old attended the University of Notre Dame (which accepted high school students) at the time for two years which he described as "Botany Bay for bad boys." Notre Dame was reported to have asked that he not return.

Nelson was admitted to the bar in 1862 and was a campaign manager for Democratic presidential nominee Samuel J. Tilden. Tilden told him: "While it is a great thing to lead armies, it is a greater thing to lead the minds of men."

Nelson “expressed compassion toward the South.” He and his father opposed Abraham Lincoln in the elections of 1860 and 1864.

Nelson attempted to run a store in Savannah, Georgia but it failed. The southern sojourn was to earn him the nickname "The Colonel" even though he never served in the military. William Allen White said later: "Not that he was ever a colonel of anything...He was just coloneliferous."

Newspapers
Nelson formally took over the Sentinel with Samuel Morss in 1879. In 1880 they moved to Kansas City and started the Star. At the time there were three daily competitors – the Evening Mail; The Kansas City Times; and the Kansas City Journal. Nelson took over sole ownership of the paper within a few months.

Nelson's business strategy called for cheap advance subscriptions and an intention to be "absolutely independent in politics, aiming to deal by all men and all parties with impartiality and fearlessness."

He purchased the Kansas City Evening Mail and its Associated Press franchise in 1882 and started the Weekly Kansas City Star in 1890 and the Sunday Kansas City Star in 1894. Nelson bought the Times in 1901, putting The Morning Kansas City Star on it.

Nelson had portraits of Tilden, Grover Cleveland, and Theodore Roosevelt in his office. Roosevelt stayed with Nelson at Oak Hall.

In one encounter, Kansas City Mayor Joseph J. Davenport was thrown down a stairwell at the Star building by editors (including William Allen White) when he was believed to have physically threatened Nelson. Nelson said afterwards, "The Star never loses!"

Nelson was “a rich man willing to attack the rich, especially if they were slumlords thwarting his dreams for a beautiful Kansas City,” according to William Allen White, the future newspaper editor and Progressive leader who worked for The Star beginning in 1891.

In 1908, The Star stopped advertising liquor for fear it was “encouraging readers to endanger their health and happiness.” Its last alcohol-related advertisement for 40 years was for Good Ole Guckenheimer Rye, whose flavor is “surpassingly fine; its purity is never questioned.”

Nelson was a beloved boss and champion of the individual reporter. He offered his employees nearly a year’s sick pay, an eight-hour day, and reportedly invented the concept of the “open newsroom,” based upon the fact that closed doors meant time-consuming appointments would need to be scheduled, which interfered with the timely transfer of information.

He developed, however, countless reasons for not advancing wages in his printing plants.

Other interests
In addition to his newspaper duties, Nelson developed an area of farmland south of downtown Kansas City into a neighborhood of more than 100 houses, including his own mansion called Oak Hall. The area, which became known as the Rockhill District, was noted for its use of limestone in both the houses and in stone walls that stood beside the streets. Nelson also acquired more than 2400 acre in what is presently Grain Valley, Missouri, for the establishment of Sni-A-Bar Farm. The farm's mission was the development of improved breeding methods and livestock. It served as one of the world's leaders in animal health for more than 30 years.

He campaigned for Kansas City's George Kessler-designed park and boulevard system and the 1900 “Kansas City Spirit” to build Convention Hall in 90 days in order to host the 1900 Democratic National Convention after the original (and new) convention hall had burned in April 1900.

Death
In February 1915, Nelson took ill with “a stoppage of the liver which interfered with nutrition and with the elimination of toxins.” A few weeks later, on March 5, he developed “uremic poisoning.” He underwent treatment at home. He lost consciousness for five days before he died at home, at two a.m., on April 13, 1915. His last words were reportedly, “I’m not afraid to die. The next time let me go. It is no kindness to keep me alive.” He was 74.

Legacy
Nelson provided in his will that following the death of his wife and daughter his Oak Hill mansion be torn down and its 30 acre estate turned into an art museum. Proceeds from his $6 million estate were used to build the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. That estate would be worth at least $194 million in real price in 2023.

Nelson’s will also established a trust for Sni-A-Bar Farm, with Presidents from the University of Missouri, the University of Kansas, and the University of Oklahoma charged with selecting its trustees.

The Art Gallery originally contained a recreation of Nelson's oak paneled room from Oak Hall (and namesake of the estate). The room contained Nelson's red plush easy chair and bookcases. The room was dismantled in 1988 to make way for a photography studio. His memorial is located in a mausoleum located at Mount Washington Cemetery in Independence, Missouri, between Truman Road and US Route 24.

Nelson was an early advocate of focusing investigative reporting in The Kansas City Star and his other publications on local municipal corruption rather than simply printing the exposés of nationally famed muckrakers. Among the many causes Nelson championed was the Progressive movement's philosophy of driving money out of both the voting booth and the courthouse, of providing free justice, and of providing minimum-wage standards. He pushed for the municipal proprietorship of public utilities, bringing running water into farm women’s kitchens and establishing parks and boulevards to enrich the urban environment.

Upon hearing of his death, President Theodore Roosevelt wrote: “There was no more useful or more patriotic citizen in the United States. No man who better exemplified how to be the highest type of public servant; although in private life, he was one of the staunchest and most loyal friends that ever lived. I mourn him as a friend. I mourn him still more deeply as an American citizen."

President Woodrow Wilson wrote that Mr. Nelson had "left a deep and abiding mark upon the annals of his profession.” President William Taft referred to him as “a man of most exceptional ability, great power, and the widest influence, which he exercised with undaunted courage for the right as he saw it.”

At the same time, Nelson's legacy is complicated, if not considered deeply flawed by some. His relationship with the younger developer J. C. Nichols ensured the imposition of racially restrictive covenants that excluded Blacks and Jews from living in certain neighborhoods or owning property there, not just at the time, but "into the limitless future." One such neighborhood is the Country Club District near The Plaza.

The Star did not report on, or feature news or the life of Black communities in Kansas City for most of the 20th century, which “disenfranchised, ignored and scorned generations of Black Kansas Citians.” This negatively and irrevocably played a contributing role in race relations and standards of living for Black people and others across the Kansas City metropolitan region and indeed the Midwest.

In 2020, the newspaper apologized and ran a six-part series about its generational racism and consequently “stripped from its pages and website the name, words and image that recognized its first publisher and founder.”The series was part of a movement of reckoning within the media and newspaper industry for its historic and continuing racism in the wake of the protests after the death of George Floyd.

In 2021, The Kansas City Star President and Editor Mike Fannin said William Rockhill Nelson’s slogan, ‘A Paper for the People,’ was “lofty but ultimately dishonest.”

“The Star was not ‘A Paper for the People’ through much of its history,” Fannin said. “It was a paper for only some people, namely white people. Those values don’t square at all with The Star newsroom of today.”