Andrew Jackson Aikens was born in Barnard, Vermont. He edited several small-town newspapers in Vermont and Massachusetts, and worked in the state printing office in Boston.

Career

He campaigned for the Free Soil party in 1852, was employed as a special correspondent for the New York Evening Post in 1853, and came West in 1854. Aikens was impressed with Milwaukee and its possibilities so he accepted William E. Cramer's offer to become commercial and city editor of the Evening Wisconsin. He became its business manager in 1857 and a partner in 1868.

With Wellington Hart, he purchased the Milwaukee Daily American after the election of 1856 and converted it into a Republican journal. One year later it was merged with the Milwaukee News. Aikens claimed credit for inventing the "patent inside." By 1864 Aikens and Cramer were selling these ready-printed sheets with columns of national news and advertising matter, and by 1877 the firm supplied "patent insides" to more than half of the weekly newspapers published in the country and had regional offices throughout the eastern U.S. 

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Andrew Jackson Aikens

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