Adolph Ochs

Adolph Simon Ochs (March 12, 1858 – April 8, 1935) was an American newspaper publisher and former owner of The New York Times and The Chattanooga Times (now the Chattanooga Times Free Press).

Early life and career

Ochs was born to a Jewish family in Cincinnati, Ohio, on March 12, 1858. His parents, Julius Ochs and Bertha Levy were both German immigrants. His father had left Bavaria for the United States in 1846. He was a highly educated man and fluent in six languages that he taught at schools in the South. He sided with the Union during the war. Bertha, who had come to the United States in 1848, a refugee from Rhenish Bavaria and the revolution there, had lived in the South before her 1853 marriage with Julius, and during the war sympathized with the South, though their differing sympathies didn't separate their household.

After the war, the family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee. In Knoxville, Adolph studied in the public schools and during his spare time delivered newspapers. At 11, he went to work at the Knoxville Chronicle as office boy to William Rule, the editor, who became a mentor. In 1871 he was a grocer's clerk at Providence, Rhode Island, attending a night school meanwhile. He then returned to Knoxville, where he was a druggist's apprentice for some time. In 1872, he returned to the Chronicle as a "printer's devil," who looked after various details in the composing room of the paper.