Future publisher joins Galveston News as office boy

On this day in 1874, fifteen-year-old George B. Dealey went to work as an office boy for the Galveston News. He worked for this publishing concern the rest of his life. Dealey was born in England but moved to Galveston with his family in 1870. He rose steadily at the News, whose founder A. H. Belo sent him to Dallas to found the Dallas Morning News in 1885; the two papers, which shared a network of correspondents, heralded the beginning of "chain journalism." Dealey became a board member of both newspapers in 1902, vice president and general manager of the corporation in 1906, and president in 1919. In 1926 he bought the company from the Belo family. He was instrumental in the adoption of George E. Kessler's plan for the city of Dallas in 1910 and was president of the Philosophical Society of Texas and founder and lifetime president of the Dallas Historical Society. The man the New York Times called the dean of American publishers died at his Dallas home in 1946.