American humorist, better known as Petroleum V. Nasby; born at Vestal, Broome County, NY, on the 20th of September 1833. In his youth he learned the printer’s trade. After being connected with several papers in Ohio, he became successively editor of the Plymouth Advertiser, the Mansfield Herald, the Bucyrus Journal, and the Findlay Jeffersonian. While editing the Jeffersonian he began, in 1860, to insert his “Nasby” letters, afterward collected and published under the title The Struggles—Social, Political and Financial—of Petroleum V. Nasby (1872). In 1865 Locke became proprietor and editor of the Toledo Blade, in which he satirized President Johnson’s method of reconstructing the Southern States. In 1871 he removed to New York and became managing editor of the Evening Mail, but he returned to Ohio after a few years. Mr. Locke published Divers Views, Opinions and Prophecies of Yours Truly (1865); Swingin’ Round the Circle (1867); Nasby in Exile (1882); and many political, social and literary pamphlets. He died in Toledo, OH, on the 15th of February 1888.
