Earl Chapin is best known as the western Wisconsin correspondent for the St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press, a position he held between 1951 and his death in 1973. During these twenty-two years, Chapin regularly contributed news items, columns, and feature stories, often of a historical nature. He covered a seventeen-county area, stretching from Superior, Wisconsin, to Prairie du Chien.
Chapin was born at Badger, Minnesota, on January 10, 1910, and graduated from Roseau (MN) High School. Working his way through college, he received a bachelor of science degree from the University of Minnesota in 1943, after several years of interrupted study. Mr. Chapin devoted most of his life to journalism and writing: as a free-lance writer, publisher of a small-town weekly newspaper, and correspondent for the Pioneer Press. Chapin died on November 18, 1973, following a long illness.
Earl Chapin began his professional writing career in 1930, producing short informative features for juvenile magazines. His early articles appeared in such periodicals as The Pioneer, Evangelical Tidings, Youth's World, Open Road for Boys, Onward, and Boy's Life.
Chapin turned to writing juvenile fiction, circa 1933. Many of these pieces were published in journals such as The Boy's World. At the same time, he also wrote articles which appeared in what he referred to as “slick-paper magazines:” American Home, Country Home, Modern Mechanix, Farm Journal, Outdoor Life, Author and Journalist, and Forum. Much of his work during the 1940s and early 1950s appeared in church publications for youth, including Classmate (Methodist), The Young Catholic Messenger, Young People (Baptist), and Our Young People (Lutheran). The story which brought him the most attention, “The Great Drop Game” (1957), has appeared in five junior high English textbooks, and in Boy's Life Treasury. Chapin engaged in free-lance writing throughout his entire career. In all, he composed more than 200 short stories and articles.
In December 1935, Chapin joined the Minnesota Writers' Project, of the federal Work Projects Administration. In February 1936, he became state editor of the project, which produced Minnesota: A State Guide (1937).
Earl Chapin resigned from the Writers' Project in 1937, and began his career as a newspaper journalist with the purchase of the Warroad (MN) Pioneer, which he edited and published until 1945. He wrote numerous historical articles for the Pioneer, as well as various local and regional history booklets. While at the Pioneer, Chapin also compiled a short history of the Roseau Valley for Minnesota History, the quarterly journal of the Minnesota Historical Society, and developed a system of commercial tourist guides for northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. Chapin sold the newspaper in 1945, and devoted the next two years solely to free-lance writing.
Mr. Chapin began his long association with the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1947, accepting a position as “roving” out-state Minnesota reporter. Initially locating in the St. Paul area, he soon returned to Roseau where, in 1948, he worked as Roseau County Assessor, while continuing to contribute to the Pioneer Press. Chapin resigned as assessor after two years, in order to write his first book Long Wednesdays. Awaiting publication of the completed manuscript, he took a position in northern Minnesota with the state's Department of Revenue.
In 1951, Pioneer Press editor V. E. Fairbanks offered Chapin the position of “roving” reporter for Wisconsin. Chapin accepted, resigned from the Department of Revenue, and moved his family to Bayport, Minnesota. The Chapins purchased a home in Woodville, Wisconsin, in 1954. As “Roving Reporter,” Chapin traveled extensively throughout seventeen western Wisconsin counties, producing feature articles concerning the people he met and the places he visited.
In addition to Long Wednesdays, Chapin was the author of Heavy Water (1954), a juvenile adventure story; Wonderful Western Wisconsin (1967), a compilation of selected features, columns, and pictures pertaining to western Wisconsin; and The Angle of Incidents (1970), a history of Warroad, Minnesota, and the Northwest Angle country. In addition, Chapin edited the Woodville Centennial Book (1970). Earl Chapin's Tales of Wisconsin (1973) is a selection of some of his stories and columns. Each of these volumes is in the River Falls Area Research Center. At the time of his death in 1973, Mr. Chapin had completed six chapters of yet another book, a fictional history set in the days of the fur trade.
The family for several years operated the House of Memories museum, which was housed in a former country school building located at the intersection of highways 29 and 63 near Martell, in Pierce County, Wisconsin. The museum was organized in 1958 by the Chapins to help finance the education of their children; it was staffed by Mrs. Chapin and the children. The museum was closed, circa 1963.
