Abner's oldest son, Elias, was born in Oxford, Ohio, in 1823. In an 1895 interview he stated his first clear memory was the trip to Lebanon with his father in 1832 and passing through the state capital of Indianapolis. He recalled the remoteness of the future town of Lebanon, no neighbors within three miles and "untutored savages" all around. He helped his father build a three sided shanty and start a garden for food. He said the outdoor life and hard work did more for him than schooling in Oxford. Between 10 and 14 he learned to farm and drive a team of oxen. After almost losing his life while making a winter trip for a sack of flour at a distant grist mill his father built a steam saw and grist mill which he learned to help run.
At age 14 Elias started learning to become a court reporter. Since there was no courthouse in Lebanon yet the proceedings were held in front of the Longley's cabin, which was also used as a makeshift "hotel" for overnight men of the law. Here, while taking care of everyone's horses and shining their boots Elias became acquainted with the language of the law.
In 1838, when his father was elected to the state House of Representatives, he got to spend time in Indianapolis and became interested in the printing trade. Working as a printer's devil setting type he claimed he learned more about spelling and language than any book could teach him. Two years later his mother died from quick consumption (Tuberculosis) and the family moved to Cincinnati. Elias continued his printing skills there and soon his brothers followed him in the trade.
In 1841 he entered Woodward College. He went to school during the week and on the weekends worked at the local newspapers.
In 1838, when his father was elected to the state House of Representatives, he got to spend time in Indianapolis and became interested in the printing trade. Working as a printer's devil setting type he claimed he learned more about spelling and language than any book could teach him. Two years later his mother died from quick consumption (Tuberculosis) and the family moved to Cincinnati. Elias continued his printing skills there and soon his brothers followed him in the trade.
In 1841 he entered Woodward College. He went to school during the week and on the weekends worked at the local newspapers.
William Woodward (1768-1833) and his wife Abigail first started the Woodward Free Grammar School as an effort of educated Cincinnati's poor. The growth of the public school system around 1829 caused him to reevaluate his goals for the school. Additional land was purchased, and a new school built.
The Woodward High School of Cincinnati opened October 1831 in a two story brick building on Franklin Street in the Bond Hill community of Cincinnati. It was the first high school west of the Allegheny Mountains.
The school's thorough education caused trustee's to apply for collegiate powers, which were granted. Woodward's College Department opened January 1836, in the same building as the high school, and alumni of the school earned degrees at graduation. The school continued to grow, and by 1841, a third story was added to the building, and plans were undertaken to construct bigger facilities, which were completed in 1855. "Old Woodward" was located on the corner of Woodward Street and Sycamore Street, and was one of the first buildings in America to use terracotta as exterior decoration.
By 1850 public schools were continuing to grow and it was becoming apparent that the need for the Woodward as a private institution was waning. The high school was suspended, so that the college portion of the school could survive on the remaining funds. Money ran out, however, and the College Department closed in 1851. Not wanting to close the school entirely, especially with a new building underway, the board decided to re-instate the high school and joined the Cincinnati public school system later that same year, changing their name to the Cincinnati Woodward High School. In 1860, the remains of William Woodward and his wife were placed in a stone vault on school grounds near the Broadway Street entrance, to honor his dedication to the school and in 1878, a monument and statue were placed over the tomb.
Shortly after college Elias attempted to follow in his father's footsteps as a Universalist preacher. A dream that his father hoped he would fulfill. Not for lack of trying, after giving several sermons Elias realized that this was not his calling and threw his sermons into the fireplace.
Elias then joined his family in the attempt of a perfect society at Utopia. Even though it failed, he met the love of his life, Margaret Elizabeth Vater from England there. He considered her a liberal minded, equally worthy and advanced thinking young woman. They were a great match.
In 1845 Elias's career would change when he read an article in the "Harbinger", a socialism and progressive magazine, about phonography. This is a system of shorthand based on a phonetic transcription of speech created by Isaac Pitman about 10 years earlier in England.
The next year a student of this shorthand came to Cincinnati to teach this method. Elias paid $36, almost a month's wages, to take the 12 lessons with seven other people. The course was very basic and meant a lot of work to learn it. Eventually only Elias and one other student worked hard enough to master it.
Even though there was not yet a demand for people with this skill Elias felt there would be and kept up his study of it. He even worked on being able to print shorthand. Not being able to get the printing plates he needed for this he wrote Isaac Pitman for them. For some reason the maker of the plates refused. So Elias found other like minded people to give him enough money to make his own phonography printing plates. And in 1848 he started the Phonetic Magazine with the help of his wife and brothers (Servetus, Septimius, Cyrenius and Alcander). Being more costly than other magazines to print he worked hard to keep his weekly issues going until 1861 when the Civil War broke out and the costs rose.
During this time he was working at The Star of the West newspaper. The editor gave him the job of transcribing a very important sermon at the United States Convention and thought his shorthand skills might be able to keep up with the speech. Plus, he was offered $10, a week's wages, if he could. Elias was successful, even though some of his words were changed in the newspaper's printing. But the byline stated it was "Recorded Phonetically by Elias Longley".
This article actually launched a career for Elias. Because next an attorney came knocking on his door looking for "the shorthand reporter". It was Charles Anderson, the future Governor of Ohio, that wanted Elias to record a trial he was beginning. He wanted his client's words to be correctly recorded so the people reading it would see that he was innocent. (It was a well known doctor being accused of seduction). Longley would give it a try.
At the trial, he attracted attention as his fingers flew across his paper. He felt like it was a day long speed writing course. Unfortunately for the defendant, he was found guilty after the three day trial. But Anderson sang Elias's praises for his skill. He claimed all his life that only Elias ever recorded correctly anything he ever spoke.
Between 1856 and 1860 Elias and his brothers Cyrenius, Servetus, Septimius and Alcander published the “Type of the Times” based on his shorthand. It featured writing and spelling reform done in phonemic orthography. A phonemic orthography is an orthography (a system for writing a language) in which the graphemes (written symbols) correspond to the phonemes (significant spoken sounds) of the language.
During this time he was working at The Star of the West newspaper. The editor gave him the job of transcribing a very important sermon at the United States Convention and thought his shorthand skills might be able to keep up with the speech. Plus, he was offered $10, a week's wages, if he could. Elias was successful, even though some of his words were changed in the newspaper's printing. But the byline stated it was "Recorded Phonetically by Elias Longley".
This article actually launched a career for Elias. Because next an attorney came knocking on his door looking for "the shorthand reporter". It was Charles Anderson, the future Governor of Ohio, that wanted Elias to record a trial he was beginning. He wanted his client's words to be correctly recorded so the people reading it would see that he was innocent. (It was a well known doctor being accused of seduction). Longley would give it a try.
At the trial, he attracted attention as his fingers flew across his paper. He felt like it was a day long speed writing course. Unfortunately for the defendant, he was found guilty after the three day trial. But Anderson sang Elias's praises for his skill. He claimed all his life that only Elias ever recorded correctly anything he ever spoke.
Between 1856 and 1860 Elias and his brothers Cyrenius, Servetus, Septimius and Alcander published the “Type of the Times” based on his shorthand. It featured writing and spelling reform done in phonemic orthography. A phonemic orthography is an orthography (a system for writing a language) in which the graphemes (written symbols) correspond to the phonemes (significant spoken sounds) of the language.
In 1858 Elias also worked for Nicholas Longworth (shown on the left), who was a well known lawyer, banker, real estate speculator and winemaker in Cincinnati. Longworth had started a vineyard on the hillside of the Mount Adams neighborhood (now Eden Park) and made a sparkling wine from the grapes using the traditional method used in Champagne from the 1830s through the 1850s, Longworth's still and sparkling Catawba was distributed from California to Europe where it received numerous accolades. So successful was he that he has been called the Father of American Grape Culture. He was also an abolitionist and his aid to a runaway slave was claimed to have been the inspiration for the book "Uncle Tom's Cabin".
During the Civil War, Elias went to work for the Cincinnati Daily Gazette. His reporting allowed him to meet many famous people like James A. Garfield, Abraham Lincoln, U. S. Grant, Andrew Johnson, Frederick Douglass and Henry Ward Beecher. Ohio Senator John Sherman would use Elias to listen to him practice a speech and then convert the shorthand to longhand so he could make changes instead of writing the speech first. Sherman would later serve as the Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of State.
During the Civil War, Elias would report from the actual battle sites. While travelling with the 168th Ohio National Guard he was captured by the enemy. The enemy was Confederate General John Hunt Morgan and his raiders on their 24 day raid through Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio. After seeing his shorthand writing the Raiders thought he was a spy. He could not convince the General he was a reporter and the writing was not a "secret cipher". The next night, while being held prisoner in a cabin with others, he escaped and made it back to Cincinnati to report his first hand account. A few days later his brother Septimius was on a train robbed by these Confederates.
During the Civil War, Elias would report from the actual battle sites. While travelling with the 168th Ohio National Guard he was captured by the enemy. The enemy was Confederate General John Hunt Morgan and his raiders on their 24 day raid through Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio. After seeing his shorthand writing the Raiders thought he was a spy. He could not convince the General he was a reporter and the writing was not a "secret cipher". The next night, while being held prisoner in a cabin with others, he escaped and made it back to Cincinnati to report his first hand account. A few days later his brother Septimius was on a train robbed by these Confederates.
John Hunt Morgan in Montgomery, Ohio
At the end of the war Elias was sent to Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, to cover the re-raising of the American flag there after four years.
During the Civil War Elias had a reporter working for him named Whitelaw Reid. He wrote under the by-line "Agate" and covered firsthand such battles as Shiloh and Gettysburg for the Cincinnati Gazette. After leaving Elias's tutelage at the Cincinnati Gazette in 1868, Whitelaw joined the staff of Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. The following year, he was named managing editor and by 1873 he was the editor after Greeley's death. Upon the election of President Benjamin Harrison, he was offered the role of United States Ambassador to France, which he accepted and served as from 1889 to 1892.
Returning from France Reid became the Republican vice presidential nominee when President Harrison chose to drop the sitting vice president, Levi P. Morton, from the ticket. As Harrison's wife was dying, he was a more active candidate for vice president than the sitting president. Despite their best efforts, Harrison and Reid lost to the Democratic ticket of Grover Cleveland and Adlai Stevenson, as Cleveland became the first former president to recapture the office.
For the next twenty years Elias continued working for local newspapers and always doing his reporting notes in shorthand. During this time he worked as a court report and for a time was the official reporter of the Ohio Legislature. All this work had him up by 3 a. m. and working long days, causing his health to decline.
Elias's wife also made her mark in history. Margaret V. Longley challenged restrictions on women’s roles in society during the 19th century. She learned typesetting, one of the few skilled jobs available to women in printing, but rose from there. She served as editor of Woman’s Advocate magazine and as court reporter for Cincinnati Tagliche Abend-Post, a German-language newspaper.
In 1882, she founded her own school, Longley’s Shorthand and Typewriting Institute, and published a typing manual, “Type-Writer Lessons, for the Use of Teachers and Learners, Adapted to Remington’s Perfected Type-Writers.” The book introduced her innovation of eight-finger typing and using the thumb for the space bar, which is now known as touch typing, on the QWERTY keyboard. Among the practice phrases she included in her typing manual were such subversive lines as “no man can take her place” and “women’s right to the ballot.”
Elias's wife also made her mark in history. Margaret V. Longley challenged restrictions on women’s roles in society during the 19th century. She learned typesetting, one of the few skilled jobs available to women in printing, but rose from there. She served as editor of Woman’s Advocate magazine and as court reporter for Cincinnati Tagliche Abend-Post, a German-language newspaper.
In 1882, she founded her own school, Longley’s Shorthand and Typewriting Institute, and published a typing manual, “Type-Writer Lessons, for the Use of Teachers and Learners, Adapted to Remington’s Perfected Type-Writers.” The book introduced her innovation of eight-finger typing and using the thumb for the space bar, which is now known as touch typing, on the QWERTY keyboard. Among the practice phrases she included in her typing manual were such subversive lines as “no man can take her place” and “women’s right to the ballot.”
Margaret Vater Longley was active in the suffrage movement first in Cincinnati and later in California. She was a member of the executive committee of the National Woman Suffrage Association and later became vice president of the Ohio branch. She was also editor of the Dayton Woman's Advocate and a close friend of Susan B. Anthony.
Due to Elias's long work hours he had contracted pneumonia and a persistent bronchial cough. Even after taking a year off and spending time relaxing in the White Mountains of New Hampshire it didn't completely cure him. In 1885 his doctor told him to go to southern California for his health. In this new climate Elias greatly improved in a year.
The family soon bought a 2 acre plot between Pasedena and Los Angeles. He and his wife camped beneath a large oak tree while they watched their home being built. They soon added numerous fruit trees and flowering plants. Eventually his brother Septimius and half brother Albert would move to the area.
Feeling healthier Elias started teaching phonography and shorthand again. Before long his shorthand method was so popular it was being taught in the local high schools.
On January 13, 1899 his bronchial condition caught up with him. His death certificate said he died from "fibroid phthisis". Medical books at the time described it like this; "There is an increased amount of fibroid tissue or of connective tissue elements in the diseased area. There is a reduction in the size of the affected lung, which becomes hardened and dense. This disease is insidious and of very slow development. The general health of the patient is not materially impaired at the first, and consequently the disease may be overlooked, until it is firmly established. While cough is present breathing may be embarrassed, especially upon exertion. As the disease has progressed, changes have taken place also in the heart, liver or kidneys, resulting in chronic disease of these organs, which may terminate in dropsy or other characteristic manifestation." He had tuberculosis.
Feeling healthier Elias started teaching phonography and shorthand again. Before long his shorthand method was so popular it was being taught in the local high schools.
On January 13, 1899 his bronchial condition caught up with him. His death certificate said he died from "fibroid phthisis". Medical books at the time described it like this; "There is an increased amount of fibroid tissue or of connective tissue elements in the diseased area. There is a reduction in the size of the affected lung, which becomes hardened and dense. This disease is insidious and of very slow development. The general health of the patient is not materially impaired at the first, and consequently the disease may be overlooked, until it is firmly established. While cough is present breathing may be embarrassed, especially upon exertion. As the disease has progressed, changes have taken place also in the heart, liver or kidneys, resulting in chronic disease of these organs, which may terminate in dropsy or other characteristic manifestation." He had tuberculosis.
When the family moved to California Mrs. Longley became the Vice President of the People's Party in California and spearheaded the Los Angeles Campaign Committee for a referendum on suffrage.
In April 2022 Elias and Margaret were honored in Cincinnati with a historical marker. Three new historical markers in Cincinnati were dedicated to draw attention to some lesser-known stories of the local women who helped win the right to vote just over a century ago. They are among the 250 markers nationwide along the National Votes for Women Trail, sponsored by the National Collaborative for Women’s History Sites (NCWHS) and the William G. Pomeroy Foundation, that recognize and honor the work of the thousands of women who contributed to the suffrage movement.
Elias and Margaret are interred in the Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena, just north of their home in Pasadena.
His brother Septimius is also in this cemetery.