Ambrose E. Gonzales

Ambrose Elliott Gonzales (May 27, 1857 – July 11, 1926) was a newspaper founder with his brother and wrote stories about African Americans. He was born on a plantation in Colleton County, South Carolina. After working as a telegraph operator, he and his brother Narciso Gonzales founded the newspaper The State. His paper opposed lynching and advocated for voting rights. It was critical of South Carolina's white supremacist governor Benjamin Tillman whose nephew James H. Tillman murdered Narcsico Gonzalez. Ambrose Elliott Gonzales is remembered as a pioneering journalist in South Carolina and the writer of black dialect sketches on the Gullah people of the South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry. Family Gonzales was the son of Colonel Ambrosio José Gonzales and Harriet Rutledge Elliot. His father was a colonel in the Confederate Army who played an instrumental role in defending South Carolina during the American Civil War after he had been a Cuban revolutionary leader who opposed the oppressive Spanish rule. His mother was the daughter of the wealthy South Carolina rice planter, state senator and writer, William Elliott. Early career Although he had no formal education after 17, Ambrose Gonzales became the telegraph operator in Grahamville, South Carolina, in October 1874, to help support his large extended family. His work as a telegraph operator lead to his involvement in state politics. During the controversial election of 1876, his telegraph office became the primary source of election results in the region of Beaufort County, South Carolina for both the presidential race, between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden, and gubernatorial race in which Wade Hampton III ran on a platform of ending Reconstruction. Gonzales became a Bourbon Democrat. In 1879, Gonzales left the telegraph office in Grahamville to manage the family plantation, Oak Lawn, on the Edisto River. After several years of failing harvests, he left for New York City in 1881, where he became a telegrapher for Western Union while he partook of the rich cultural life of the city. He left for New Orleans in the autumn of 1882 to work as a telegrapher, but he returned to New York the next year. In 1885, he left New York for good and returned to South Carolina to join his brother Narciso Gener Gonzales (1858–1903) on the staff of the Charleston, South Carolina News and Courier.