The student press at what is now NIU was born the same year as the school itself, 1899. A 28-year-old student and schoolteacher named Alice Crosby became the first editor of the Northern Illinois.

Alice was born April 27, 1871, in Henry County, Ill., the seventh of eight children. Alice’s parents, Thomas Crosby Jr. and Eliza Parker Crosby, had moved to America from Yorkshire, England, in 1854 and 1855, respectively. All of the children attended college and most of them worked as teachers at some point.

After attending school in the Kewanee area, Alice began teaching in the Blinn school district in 1887, for $25 a month. She taught in several school systems until 1898, except for two years spent at Normal University for more teacher training. In 1899, Alice transferred her credit from the “old” Normal and became one of the first 173 students at the new Northern Illinois State Normal School in DeKalb. Along with her newspaper duties, she also was captain of the basketball team representing the Glidden Society (a literary group).

Alice graduated in 1901 with a teacher’s certificate. Dr. John W. Cook, the school’s president, wrote in a letter of recommendation: “She is in every way a most estimable woman. Her work was done with great fidelity and conscientiousness. I wish to be understood as recommending her unqualifiedly as a lady and as a student and teacher. We esteem it a privilege to have had her with us here.”

Alice taught at DeKalb High School for a year before returning to Kewaunee, where she taught until retiring in 1918. She also studied at the University of Chicago, either during summers or by correspondence. In 1921, her coursework was accepted by her alma mater in DeKalb, which that year had been renamed Northern Illinois State Teachers College. Alice received her bachelor’s degree in education.

Meanwhile, she owned and operated Pine Hill Farm in Neponset from 1914 until 1918. In 1919 she married Frederick Albert Griese, a German immigrant who operated a grocery and general merchandise store. Albert died in 1927. Alice would remarry that same year, to Kewaunee city treasurer Charles R. Lory. But she became a widow again in 1935. Alice died in Kewanee on Feb. 15, 1958.

Sources: “Crosbys of Henry County” by E. C. Kellogg

The Norther, 1900