David Ross Locke (September 20, 1833 – February 15, 1888) was born in Vestal, Broome Country, New York. As a child, he was deeply influenced by his parents’ strong moral convictions. After only five years of formal schooling, he was apprenticed as a printer to the Cortland Democrat in 1845. In addition to learning about the business of printing at the Democrat, Locke began to develop his writing ability and cultivate an awareness of social issues and popular opinion. Over the next decade, Locke developed a drinking problem which plagued him throughout his life, despite his public commitment to the temperance movement. In 1855 he married Martha Hannah Bodine, with whom he had three sons
By 1862, Locke owned and edited the Hancock Jeffersonian in Findlay, Ohio. It was there, on April 25,1862, that he published the first of what developed into a series of letters commenting on current events, which Locke wrote as Petroleum Vesuvius Nasby - a racist, redneck postmaster from Confedrit X-Roads, Kentucky. However, Locke and Nasby are most closely identified with the Toledo Blade, where Locke began working in 1865.
Locke used Nasby and the pages of his Toledo Blade to express staunch support for Republican Reconstruction policies in the South and to ridicule, in scathing satires, ex-Confederate racism and intransigence. Locke’s facility for humor allowed these themes to be presented as humorous drama, rather than as lecture. As the letters grew in fame, Nasby began to address national issues, rather than local ones, and Thomas Nast became Nasby’s illustrator.
In addition to his career as a humorist writer, Locke eagerly pursued a career in public service, winning the position of alderman in Toledo’s Third Ward in 1886. However, Locke became ill from tuberculosis in November 1887. He published his last Nasby letter on December 26, 1887, while he was confined to bed rest. Two months later, he died.
After Locke’s death, the satirical postman was gradually forgotten by Americans. Nasby’s importance during the Civil War is often ignored today, but both Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant acknowledged Locke as a key source of support during their administrations. They are remembered as fans of Nasby’s as well: supposedly the last thing Lincoln read before his assassination was a book of Nasby’s collected letters.
"Shows Why He Should Not Be Drafted," from The Nasby Papers (Indianapolis: C.O. Perrine & Co.,1864).
"In Canada," from The Nasby Papers (Indianapolis: C.O. Perrine & Co.,1864).
"Is Finally Drafted," from The Nasby Papers (Indianapolis: C.O. Perrine & Co.,1864).
"Preface," from Nasby in Exile (Boston: Locke Publishing Company, 1882).
"Chapter I. The Departure, Voyage, and Landing," from Nasby in Exile (Boston: Locke Publishing Company, 1882).
"Chapter II. London, And Things Pertaining," from Nasby in Exile (Boston: Locke Publishing Company, 1882).
"The Effect the Proclamation of Secretary Seward produced in Kentucky," from Swingin Round the Cirkle (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1867).
"Refuses to Support the President, having no Confidence in Him. —Again warns the Democracy," from Swingin Round the Cirkle (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1867).