Elijah Herschel Dove (9 October 1869–13 January 1952), journalist, was born in Scott County and was the son of George Ringold Dove and Rosie Carter Dove. His father worked in various occupations, including teaching school and bookkeeping, and in 1878 moved the family to Goodson, a Washington County town that became a city in 1890 and was renamed Bristol for its contiguous Tennessee neighbor. As a child Herschel Dove, as he was known throughout his life, worked in a tobacco factory. He attended King College during the 1883–1884 academic year. In the mid-1880s Dove became a printer's devil, or apprentice, at the weekly Bristol Courier across the state line in Tennessee, where he learned the newspaper business. By 1888, when the Courier expanded to daily publication, he was working as a full-time printer and reporter for the paper.

In 1898 Dove became associate editor of the Bristol Daily Tribune, published on the Virginia side of the state boundary, a Democratic organ for which he wrote editorials promoting the successful congressional campaign of William Francis Rhea. In December of that year the Daily Tribune merged with the Bristol Times-Courier to become the Bristol Tribune and Times-Courier. Known as the Daily Courier beginning in 1900, the newspaper installed the city's first linotype machine in 1904 with Dove as its first operator. In February 1907 the Courier was consolidated with the Bristol Herald to form the Bristol Herald Courier, published in Virginia. Dove was named editor of what became one of the most influential newspapers in the region, reaching subscribers in southwestern Virginia, eastern Kentucky and Tennessee, and western North Carolina.

During his forty-three years at the helm of the Herald Courier, Dove achieved a reputation as a compassionate advocate of citizens' rights and welfare, no matter their class, and often criticized those in positions of influence and power. In shaping community opinion, he avoided florid, dogmatic prose in favor of succinctly and directly presenting issues to his readers. On one occasion, a strong campaign against a local liquor-option ordinance resulted in death threats and prompted Dove to keep a pistol in his desk drawer for protection. Even when poor health confined him to his home late in the 1940s, he continued to deliver his editorials each day.

Dove retired from the Herald Courier on 15 March 1950, the same day the publisher sold the newspaper to a former national chairman of the Republican Party. Widely respected for his longevity and integrity, Dove devoted more than sixty years to the newspaper profession and left the Herald Courier with a circulation of 20,000 paid subscribers and an estimated 80,000 daily readers. At the time of his retirement he had enjoyed one of the longest tenures of any editorial writer in the country and was the only living charter member of the International Typographical Union's Bristol chapter, organized in 1901.

Dove married Nannie Worth Graham on 16 March 1897 in Bristol, Tennessee. They had two sons and one daughter. Elijah Herschel Dove died at a hospital in Bristol, Virginia, of complications from throat surgery on 13 January 1952. He was buried in Glenwood Cemetery, in Bristol, Tennessee.

Sources Consulted:
Birth date in Birth Register, Scott Co., Bureau of Vital Statistics (BVS), Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia; biographies in Philip Alexander Bruce, Lyon Gardiner Tyler, and Richard L. Morton, History of Virginia (1924), 6:252–253 (with variant marriage date of 17 Mar. 1897 and mother's first name as Rosa), and Bristol Herald Courier, 15 Mar. 1950 (with variant birth date of 19 Oct. 1869 and portrait); marriage date confirmed by County Clerk's Office, Sullivan Co., Tenn.; Editor & Publisher, 18 Mar. 1950; Death Certificate, Bristol (with variant birth year of 1868), BVS; obituaries and editorial tributes in Bristol Herald Courier (with variant birth date of 19 Oct. 1869), Lynchburg News, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Roanoke Times, and Roanoke World-News, all 14 Jan. 1952.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Katharine E. Harbury.

How to cite this page:
Katharine E. Harbury, "Elijah Herschel Dove (1869–1952)" Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2021 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Dove_Elijah_Herschel, accessed [today's date]).

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