Helen Anderson's book, Eden Prairie, The First One Hundred Years, states that Moses Y. Beach was editor of the New York Times and that Ellet visited the area (Minnesota) at his request as Editor-in-chief of the New York Times.
Wikipedia says the New York Times was founded on September 18, 1851 by journalist and politician Henry Jarvis Raymond and former banker George Jones as the New-York Daily Times. The paper switched its name to The New York Times in 1857.
Henry Jarvis Raymond (24 January 1820–1869) was an American journalist and politician. After assisting Horace Greeley in publishing several newspapers, Raymond formed Raymond, Jones & Co. in 1851, and founded the New York Times. He was the newspaper's editor and chief proprietor until his death in New York City in 1869.
Other New York Editors around the time Ellet journeyed west in 1852:
107 Nassau Street-Sunday Times and Weekly Newspaper, Major Mordecai Noah, Editor and Proprietor
124 Fulton Streetcorner Nassau, The Sun: Moses Y. Beach, Editor and Proprietor
26 Ann Street The New World, Park Benjamin, Publisher; Rufus Wilmot Griswold, Editor
105 Nassau The Evening Mirror and The Weekly Mirror, George Pope Morris and Nathaniel Parker Willis, Editors & Publishers
154 Nassau Street The New-York Tribune, Horace Greeley, Editor
Helen Anderson's Eden Prairie, The First 100 Years, tells us that Moses Y. Beach was editor in chief of the New York Times, around 1852 when Ellet traveled from New York to Minnesota and back.
According to Wikipedia Moses Yale Beach (January 15, 1800 – July 1, 1868) acquired an interest in the New York Sun in 1835; the Sun was a penny daily paper begun in New York about three years earlier; Beach became its sole proprietor. He left the paper to his sons when he retired in 1857. Source: Wikipedia (This date (1857) is not verified by two other sources.)
Bartelby.com says Beach 1800-1868 bought the New York Sun from his brother-in-law, Benjamin Day, for whom he had been working as production manager in 1838. The Sun’s chief competitor in the penny-paper field was the New York Herald, edited by James Gordon Bennett. The two rival papers used ingenious means to get news fast—the Sun even kept carrier pigeons in a special house atop its building. Costs, especially during the Mexican War, mounted so much that at a conference in Beach’s office the editors of a number of New York newspapers established the New York Associated Press to cooperate in securing the news. Beach is credited with the first European edition of an American paper, the weekly American Sun (1848), and with starting the newspaper syndicated article. In 1848 he turned the New York Sun over to his sons, Moses Sperry Beach and Alfred E. Beach.
See F. M. O’Brien, The Story of the Sun (1928, repr. 1968).
http://bartelby.com/65/be/Beach-Mo.html
Infoplease.com says Beach, Moses Yale, 1800–1868, bought the New York Sun from his brother-in-law, Benjamin Day, for whom he had been working as production manager, in 1838. In 1848 he turned the New York Sun over to his sons, Moses Sperry Beach and Alfred E. Beach.
See F. M. O'Brien, The Story of the Sun (1928, repr. 1968).
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0806582.html
Poets.org online Walking Tour: Edgar Allan Poe's Publishers Row in New York City http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19206, which was researched by the New York Council of the Humanities, states that Beach was the Editor and Proprietor of the New York Sun on 124 Fulton Streetcorner. The Sun, New York’s biggest penny daily, would print or invent any kind of "news" to keep up its circulation, and bought Poe’s report of a trans-Atlantic balloon flight. In the forties hoaxing was acceptable journalism and Poe’s hoax was written carefully and "factually."
Poe was yet to debut the "Raven," which was first published in 1845.
The historical trail seems to negate any possibility of Moses Y. Beach being the New York Times Editor, as Helen Anderson stated in her book Eden Prairie, The First One Hundred Years. There is significant historical evidence that he was editor of the New York Sun. As to whether one of these editors or Beach, on behalf of the New York Sun, contracted Ellet to journey west and write about what she saw, which is what Anderson's book states, we have no historical documentation that would back up Anderson's claim, to date.