William Ridenbaugh

Who was William Ridenbaugh?

William Fahnestock Ridenbaugh was a newspaper publisher who started the St. Joseph Gazette in St. Joseph, Missouri.

Ridenbaugh was born in Bedford, Pennsylvania. In 1843 he moved to Missouri and started the Gazette in 1845. This was two years after St. Joseph had been established. The paper would chronicle early settlement of the Old West along the Oregon Trail and California Trail. He maintained it as a Democratic newspaper and he sold the newspaper and became Buchanan County, Missouri Circuit Court Clerk. During the Bleeding Kansas struggles in the late 1850s he was among the Missouri residents who bought land in Kansas