W. W. Woolnough

Woolnough was born in Bungay, Suffolk, and came with his family to Rochester, New York in 1833. He started work in the printing department of the Rochester Republican newspaper. In 1841, having finished his apprenticeship, he moved on to the Ashtabula Sentinel as a foreman. In August 1842, he married Emiline Manley of Ashtabula, with whom he would eventually have four daughters. He returned to Rochester in 1843, and in 1845 left for Battle Creek, Michigan with equipment sufficient to begin publication of the Western Citizen, the first newspaper ever published in that city. This failed, and he began instead to publish the fiercely Whig and anti-slavery Michigan Tribune, which also failed. In 1852, he bought the Battle Creek Journal from its founders, and became its editor and publisher.

He opposed the Whig nomination of Zachary Taylor, whom he considered the candidate of the pro-slavery wing of the Whigs.^[1] By 1854, Woolnough had given up on the party, calling to disband it and form an explicitly abolitionist party. He chaired a February meeting in his office, which led to a larger meeting in Battle Creek's Hinman Hall, which in turn led to the 'Under the Oaks' conclave in Jackson, Michigan, on July 6, 1854 (the first statewide convention that formed a platform and nominated candidates under the Republican name) where he was one of the sixty delegates who formed the new Republican Party.

In 1858, having freshly been elected to the legislature, he was one of the five local citizens appointed to write a charter for the new City of Battle Creek (until then a village).^[2]