By the time Webster Eaton (1839-1907) arrived in Nebraska in 1872, he was already an experienced newspaperman. A native of Brighton, New York, Eaton served in the Union Army for three years during the Civil War. He established the first newspaper in Montgomery County, Iowa, the Red Oak Express, with the first issue off the press on March 28, 1868. Little more than a year later he moved to Kearney, Nebraska, where he edited and published the Kearney Daily Press. He sold that paper in 1875 when he was appointed to run the U.S. Land Office in Bloomington, Franklin County.