The first public notice I have of Frank E. Jerome is a newspaper article from January, 1873. The writer posts the claim that Jerome is “the swiftest compositor in Kansas,” that he had set 2600 ems (a printer’s term, essentially pieces of type) in an hour. This is to say that Jerome was a printing professional who set type for a living. Such people were numerous on the newspaper-rich prairie frontier, and they were legend, for various reasons.