William Dudley Pelley

William Dudley Pelley (Born in March 1890) was an American writer (Of screenplays, short stories and novels), journalist and fascist politician who ran in the 1936 presidential election as a candidate for the Christian Party. He died on June 30th of 1965 in Noblesville, Indiana and was laid to rest at the local Crownsville Cemetery.

Pelley is best known for having been the founder of The Silver Legion of America, created the day following Adolf Hitler officially becoming the Chancellor of Germany. In 1942 he was arrested for "sedition" and sentenced to 15 years in prison, serving 8 before being released on parole.

William Dudley Pelley helped fight against Bolshevism in the Russian civil war while working under the Red Cross as a journalist and correspondent from ???? to 1920. He is noted as being staunchly opposed to jewry and proud of his pure English heritage.

Early Life

William Dudley Pelley was born in the coastal town of Lynn, Massachusetts on March 12th of 1890 as the only son of Southern Methodist Church minister William George Aspey Pelley and his wife Grace Pelley, two years after they were wed. The Pelley family was stable but rather impoverished, the economic situation of the family further worsened in William D Pelley's early years due to the depression of 1893 (Which caused William G A Pelley to abandon the ministry) and the birth of a daughter to the family, Edna Grace.

Growing up in East Templeton

In 1895, the family moved to the town of East Templeton. There the Pelleys resided for a few years on a small farm known as the Fairbanks Place. Here, William Dudley Pelley would be taught by the last member of the Fairbanks family -known as "Grandma Fairbanks"- basic literacy skills. With this, Pelley submitted a contribution to the "Youth's Letterbox" of a local newspaper, marking the small start of a long literary career.

William Dudley Pelley was also introduced to politics at this time in his life, when a group of boys at his school confronted him on whether he supported William McKinley or William Jennings Bryan. The young Pelley asked his father about the political stance of the family, William G. A. Pelley told him that he was a Republican "because I'm a Republican - and you happen to be my son."

West Gardener and Springfield, Pelley's start in publishing

Due to further economic strife, the Pelley family moved once more to West Gardener, and William G. A. Pelley took on a job as a reporter for the Gardener Journal. Dudley Pelley would spend a good amount of time in the print house of the Journal watching workers prepare the next editions of the papers and setting up lines of print himself when no one else was around. G. A. Pelley would soon quite the reporter business, but Dudley Pelley's time at the print house had him set in seeing the newspaper business as his future. In June of 1900, the Pelley family moved once more -This time supposedly due to an over-abundance of Polish immigration-, to Springfield. Notably, Springfield was a sizeable immigration destination for other non-Anglo groups at the time, mostly Italians and Russian jews, so the reasoning given for this move could be false.

Pelley's first newspaper, The Junior Star

While in Springfield, William Dudley Pelley purchased a handprint-press using money loaned to him by his father. He maintained the device using old parts discarded around printing houses. Dudley Pelley paid off his debt and acquired the money to buy multiple job-type fonts by printing business cards for his father. With these fonts and his press, Pelley began publishing his first newspaper, The Junior Star, at just the age of 12. Pelley took inspiration in his publishing from then celebrity Elbert Hubbard after reading an issue of his magazine The Philistine, said to be a precursor to The American Mercury.

G. A. Pelley would warn Dudley Pelley on publishing inflammatory articles in his papers after a minor outrage regarding an article on Pelley's teacher. William Dudley Pelley continued as he was until a neighborhood bully, Philip Taft, broke Pelley's nose following an article on the size of Taft's mouth. After this incident, Pelley gave up on The Junior Star.

The Black Crow

Pelley's next newspaper would be started in his sophomore year at Springfield Technical Highschool, while he was president of the school's debating society. The Black Crow was, in Pelley's words, a "pretentious and successful monthly magazine." Sadly, the publication of this too had to be stopped as the Pelley family moved once more (To Fulton, NY) after G. A. Pelley had become a partner in the Fulton Toilet Paper Company. William Dudley Pelley's father had decided that the toilet paper business would be best for his son, and so after only one year of high school young Pelley would enter the workforce, and from then on be entirely self-taught.

Early Employment

The Fulton Toilet Paper Company

Pelley's time at the company proved valuable, as he quickly rose through its ranks to become the treasurer and general superintendent of the firm. Pelley states in his book No More Hunger that him having been "sold to the galleys" strengthened his senses of business and his independence in the family, and that it had given him some credibility in the field of economics. Pelley also returned to magazine publishing while in Fulton, creating the "religio-sociological" monthly paper, The Philosopher in June of 1909.