Oscar D. Melton
Editor and proprietor of the Swayzee Press, Mr. Melton since 1906 has been a successful grant county newspaper man. The Swayzee Press was established in 1894, and is now issuing its twentieth volume. Under Mr. Melton's management it has been brought to its highest standard of influence and patronage, and has an excellent circulation over the w4estern side of Grant County. Mr. Melton is an experienced printer and publisher, learned the fundamentals of his trade when he was a boy; is a University graduate, for a number of years was connected with public school work, and has brought to the conduct of his paper not only experience, but a broad and liberal knowledge of books and affairs.
Oscar D. Melton was born in Jerome, Howard County, Indiana, May 14, 1871. His parents were John F. and Mary C. (Ellis) Melton. The Melton family came from Rush County to Howard County, Grandfather Melton having been a native of Virginia, while his wife was from North Carolina. On the Ellis side the family was from Tennessee, established in Howard County many years ago. John F. Melton, the father, was reared in Rush County, where he had a public school education, and became a successful teacher in Howard County. Later he took up the carpenter trade, and for ten or twelve years was a harness maker at Jerome. After that he moved to Amboy, in Miami County, where he still resides. He was the father of four children:
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Oscar D.
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Laura, who graduated from the Amboy High School, and is now a teacher of Music at Amboy.
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Hiram L., graduate of the Amboy High School, formerly a teacher in the public schools, and now Editor of the Amboy Independent.
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Esta, the wife of Charles A. Warne of Middletown, Indiana.
Oscar D. Melton spent his boyhood at Jerome, in Howard County, until he was eight years old, and attended the public schools there. He completed his public school course in the grades and high school at Amboy, graduating from the latter in 1889. In the meantime he had learned something of printing, and by that work and by teaching was enabled to pay most of his way through the University. Entering the Indiana State University in the spring of 1893, he completed the course and received the degree of A. B. with the Class of 1901. Mr. Melton has been connected with different schools, and with different publication enterprises. He was the founder of the Amboy Herald, a monthly paper at first, but after two years enlarged to a six column folio and made a weekly, and at the same time conducted a job printing office. While in the newspaper business at Amboy he also taught school during the winters. He was for one year employed in a printery at Indianapolis. For three years he was assistant principal of the Amboy High School, and later was a teacher of Science at Peru and also at Bloomington, Indiana. Moving to Swayzee in 1906, he bought the Swayzee Press, and has since given all his efforts to making this a first class paper.
Mr. Melton was united in marriage to Elizabeth Douglass, who is an educated and accomplished woman, and has been of great assistance to her husband both in home and his business career. They are the parents of one son, John D., born in 1904. Mr. and Mrs. Melton have membership in the Methodist Episcopal Church at Swayzee, and he is Superintendent of the Sunday School. Fraternally he is affiliated with Amboy Lodge No. 664, I. O. O. F. His politics is Prohibition, and recently he was his party's nominee for the office of County Treasurer of Grant County.
Source: Centennial History of Grant County Indiana 1812-1912. The Lewis Publishing Co., 1914, page 1320-21.