USA > Ohio > Ross County > Chillicothe > Ohio centennial anniversary celebration at Chillicothe, May 20-21, 1903 : under the auspices of the Ohio State Archaelogical and Historical Society : complete proceedings > Part 51
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died, and Nathaniel Willis bought his office, partly or wholly, and combined the papers. Willis was the executor of Freeman's estate. It would seem that the Scioto Gazette has a fair title to being the first paper established in Ohio, as the successor by purchase of the paper founded at Cincinnati in 1793.
It is hard to realize the difficulties under which the pio- neers of journalism labored in the region west of the Alle- ghanies. Their type and other material, their paper and ink, had to be purchased in the cities of the Atlantic seaboard, and brought across the mountains in wagons, thence by river or lake, when such transportation was available. Nor were their issues at all like the newspapers of to-day. There was very little original matter in them - notwithstanding the fact that most of the early editors were men of culture and ability, able to write well. Local news was almost entirely ignored. Clippings from Eastern papers giving the foreign news and the proceedings of Congress, formed the staple of the matter in their meager columns.
The Scioto Gazette, with becoming modesty, claims only to date from April 25, 1800. It was founded by Nathaniel Willis, who was born in Boston in 1755, was a member of the famous Boston Tea Party, and is traditionally believed to have learned the art and mystery of printing as an apprentice under Benjamin Franklin. He published the Independent Chronicle in Boston from 1774 to 1784. He then removed to Winchester, Virginia, where he published a paper. In 1790 he removed to Martinsburg and established the Potomac Guar- dian, which he published until 1796. He then came to Ohio, and founded the Ohio Gazette.
When was the Gazette begun? Richard Storrs Willis, his. grandson, in 1900, wrote to the proprietors of the Gazette this statement, which is printed in the paper's centennial issue April 28, 1900, after stating that Nathaniel Willis ended his work in Martinsburg in 1796: "He then removed to Chilli- cothe and founded the Scioto Gazette." The fact of its found- ing in 1796 is asserted by an article in Harper's Magazine for January, 1858, and by the Scioto Gazette of September 10, 1867. Mr. Frederic Hudson, in his "Journalism in the United
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States," also says: "It was not until 1796 that he issued the Scioto Gazette as the organ of the Territorial government."
It seems probable that the Scioto Gazette was really founded in 1796; and that either it was discontinued for a time, or that Mr. Willis, for some reason unknown, started his volume and issue numbers anew in 1800. The date claimed by the publishers is April 25, 1800, and the proofs are clear and convincing of the continuous publication of the paper un- der the same name from then to the present. It is the oldest living paper in the West, and one of the oldest, if not the oldest, paper of continuous publication in the United States.
The third paper to be established in Ohio was the Western Spy and Hamilton Gazette, which began issue in Cincinnati in 1799. In 1823 its name was changed to the National Re- publican and Ohio Political Register. One of its editors was Sol. Smith, later well known as an actor and manager in St. Louis and elsewhere, and the maternal grandfather of the actor, Sol. Smith Russell.
The first number of the Ohio Register and Virginia Her- ald, the progenitor of the present Marietta Register, was issued from a primitive little printing office in the old stock- ade in that city, on December 18, 1801. Wyllys Silliman and Elijah Backus brought from Philadelphia a printing outfit, including a wooden Ramage press, with stone bed. The type faces were inked with "balls" made of sheep pelts, stuffed with wool to give elasticity. This press was preserved by the Register until 1888, when a fire destroyed the office and its contents. The paper was sold in 1810 to Mr. Caleb Emerson who, on October 10 of that year, issued the first number of the American Spectator. In 1813 it was sold again, and issued as the American Friend, edited by David Everett, one of the brightest literary men of whom Marietta can boast. In 1833, the name was changed to Marietta Gazette. It was merged in the Intelligencer in 1842, under Beman Gates. This paper was purchased in 1862 by Hon. R. M. Stimson, and the name changed to the Register, which it now bears.
On December 9, 1804, the Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Mercury was founded in that city, by Rev. John W. Browne,
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editor, almanac publisher, town recorder, bookseller and vender of patent medicines. It endured for eleven years, when it was purchased by the Cincinnati Gazette, founded in 1806. The name was perpetuated with that of the weekly edition of the latter for many years. The writer recalls seeing this paper, under the title Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Weekly Gazette, about the time of the beginning of the civil war.
The next founded Ohio newspaper which is still existing . was the Western Star of Lebanon. It dates from March, 1807. Its name has never been changed. Its founder was Hon. John McLean, afterwards justice of the United States supreme court, then a young law student, who married in the spring of that year, and who was not admitted to the bar until the fol- lowing autumn. Probably one factor in the hazardous experi- ment of starting a weekly paper in the shire town of a county which did not contain over 800 people, was the fact that his younger brother, Nathaniel McLean, had learned the printer's art in the office of the Liberty Hall, at Cincinnati. Years afterward, Nathaniel McLean founded the Pioneer at St. Paul, Minn., the first paper in the present northwest. The press on which the Western Star was printed was a Ramage, with wooden frame and stone bed, like the first Marietta press, and it is believed it was the same press which was used in Cincinnati in 1793 to print the Centinel of the Northwestern Territory. The present editor, Mr. Will S. Mckay, writes :
The oldest copy of the Star in existence is dated September 10, 1810. The paper was then edited and managed by Nathaniel McLean. This issue referred to is a small folio, printed on strong, coarse paper, now yellow with age. It contains no editorial matter and no local intelli- gence whatever, except such as may be gleaned from advertisements. It has intelligence from Europe more than two months old, and intelligence from New York and St. Louis three weeks old. The only matter, aside from advertisements, prepared for the issue is a communication proposing Thomas Worthington for governor, Jeremiah Morrow for congress, John Bigger for the state senate ,and Mathias Corwin, Michael H. Johnson and David Morris for the lower house of the General Assembly. The adver- tisements contain nine notices of estray horses taken up and their appraise- ment, at from $20 to $35, and a reward of 6} cents for a runaway apprentice. Offers are made to 50 cents for wheat, and notice is given that good rye
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whiskey, at 40 cents per gallon, will be taken in exchange for goods at Lebanon.
This is quoted as a fair sample of the contents of the news- papers of Ohio for at least a score of years after the admission of the state into the union. The absence of local news from their columns is remarkable. The advertisements, in the vast majority of instances, give the only clue to the sequence of local events, the mode of life, the industries and progress of the pioneer inhabitants.
It is unfortunate that the publishers of those early days did not carefully preserve complete files of their papers. Or the fault may have been with subsequent publishers, in not preserving as valuable historical documents, the issues of their predecessors. Too many of them seem to have looked upon their papers merely as a means of livelihood, and to be utterly oblivious to the historical value of their files. Of all the ear- liest papers of the state the only complete file, so far as can be learned, is that of the Marietta Register and its ancestors, which are preserved in the library of Marietta college. It is safe to say that it was due to the college authorities, rather than the proprietors, that the earlier volumes were preserved.
It will be noted that the establishment of newspapers fol- lowed the lines of settlement. The earlier colonization was along the Ohio, and then northward along the streams tribu- tary to the "beautiful river." In 1796 congress enacted a law authorizing Colonel Ebenezer Zane to open a trail from Wheeling to Limestone, Ky., now Maysville, for which ser- vice he was to receive the privilege of locating military war- rants upon three sections of land, each a mile square - one at the crossing of the Muskingum, one at the Hockhocking and one at the Scioto. He located the first where Zanesville now stands, the second on the site of Lancaster and the third on the eastern bank of the Scioto, opposite Chillicothe, as the Scioto formed the eastern boundary of the Virginia military district. Zane's Trace, as it was called, soon developed into a line of settlements, of which Lancaster was one. Many of the pioneers of that town and of Fairfield county were Ger- mans. This led to the establishment at Lancaster of the first
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German paper west of the Alleghanies, under the patriotic title of Der Ohio Adler - which, being translated, is the Ohio Eagle. It was founded by Jacob Dietrich, but the year is somewhat in doubt. Mr. Wetzler, the present editor of the Lancaster Eagle, remembers that General Sanderson, a noted pioneer citizen of 1799, told him that Mr. Dietrich emigrated to Lancaster in 1807, and at once started the Adler. This paper passed into the hands of Edward Shaeffer about 1813, and an English edition was begun, called the Eagle. The pres- ent proprietor of the Eagle, whose father, Thomas Wetzler, purchased it in 1870, is unable to state when the German edi- tion was discontinued. Mr. Carl Pletz, of the Cincinnati Volksblatt, however, is confident that some time in the thir- ties its name was changed to the Lancaster Volksfreund, that it was purchased and removed to Columbus in 1841, then re- verting to the old name of Adler. In 1843 Jacob Reinhard and Frederick Fieser bought it, changed its name to the Co- lumbus Westbote, which paper is still in publication. At any rate, the Ohio Eagle, under the same name, continues to flourish to the present, and is one of the journalistic land- marks of Ohio.
The first paper in the Seven Ranges of Eastern Ohio was the Ohio Patriot, established at Lisbon (then New Lisbon) by William D. Lepper, a German. It has retained the same name down to the present time. Its present editor, Mr. W. S. Potts, claims it to be the oldest paper in Ohio bear- ing the same name continuously. The Steubenville Herald was established in 1806, but under a different name. The Marietta Register is in the same category. He questions whether a name acquired by purchase entitles a newspaper to assume the earlier date. This must be a matter of indi- vidual opinion. At any rate the claim of the Patriot to be the oldest Ohio paper bearing the same name can not be main- tained against the claims of the Scioto Gazette and the West- ern Star. Its place as third in this category cannot be dis- puted. Its history is almost coextensive with that of Colum- biana county, and it is an honor to the press of Ohio.
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The present Zanesville Courier is the legitimate succes- sor of the Muskingum Messenger, the first paper published in Zanesville, dating from 1809. Its founder was Hon. Ezekiel T. Cox, father of the widely-known Hon. Samuel Sullivan. Cox, perhaps better known by the nickname of Sunset Cox,. once a member of congress from the Columbus district, and. later from New York city. In 1812 the title was changed to. the Express and Advertiser, and in 1823 it appeared as the Ohio Republican. Various changes in the management took place, until 1845, when David H. Layman purchased it, changed the name to the Courier, under which title it has re- mained. It was the third newspaper founded in towns located upon Zane's Trace, and like the other two, it has had a career of prosperity, all things considered.
The wave of settlement and civilization kept sweeping northward from the Ohio river during these years. The news- paper stage of development next reached what is now Frank- lin county. Col. James Kilbourne, a native of Connecticut, born in 1770, who had taken orders in the Episcopal church, conceived the lofty purpose of establishing a Christian colony in the wilds beyond the Alleghanies. In 1803 he came to Ohio to spy out the land. Reaching the northern part of what is now Franklin county, he surveyed and purchased a tract of 16,000 acres of land. The next year the first party of emigrants came out and settled at Worthington, a village some- seven miles north of the present city limits of Columbus. Col. Kilbourne realized fully the power of the press as an educator and civilizer, and in 1808 arranged the purchase of printing materials. For some reason, the issue of a paper was delayed until 1811, when the Western Intelligencer saw the light, the first newspaper in the central section of Ohio. Col. Kil- bourne then sold the establishment to Buttles & Smith. Their enterprise was successful, not because of any large number of subscribers, but on account of the war of 1812 with Great Britain, which made that section of the state a base for the preparation, provisioning and reinforcement of the expedition under Gen. Hull against Detroit.
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The Western Intelligencer passed through the hands of several proprietors, one of whom was Ezra Griswold, later identified with the Delaware Gazette. Some time in 1813 the paper was removed to Columbus, and shortly after its name was changed to the Columbus Gazette. Like all others of the pioneer papers of the state, the changes of proprietorship were frequent. John M. Gallagher, who owned the Ohio Politi- cal Register, consolidated that paper with the Gazette in 1837, when he bought an interest in the latter. The name was then changed to the Ohio State Journal and Register. The last two words were soon dropped from the title, and the Ohio State Journal it has remained since. In 1839 the paper blossomed into a daily, which has for many years been one of the leading papers of the state. Among the noted men who have been associated with it may be named Judge William B. Thrall, Oren Follett, John Greiner, the writer of many popular Whig songs in the famous "hard cider" Harrison campaign of 1840; William Dean Howells, the distinguished author; William T. Coggeshall, Gen. James M. Comly, A. J. Francisco, Samuel J. Flickinger, now the Associated Press representative at Cincinnati, and Samuel G. McClure, the pres- ent editor. The Ohio Statesman was a notable Columbus daily in the mid-years of the nineteenth century, and the Dis- patch dating from the seventies, is one of the leading dailies of Central Ohio.
As the first settlements were made on the Ohio river, and as the earliest lines of emigration moved either from the river northward or westward from the regions surrounding Pittsburg and Wheeling, the earliest newspapers were in the southern half of the state. These comprised the first and second lines of settlement of Ohio. The third was that of the Western Reserve. On July 10, 1800, Gen. Arthur St. Clair, the territorial governor, by proclamation, erected the entire area of the Western Reserve into one county named Trumbull, the shire town of which was Warren. The first newspaper in this magnificent area, now the seat of Cleveland, the metropo- lis of the state, was begun at Warren on June 16, 1812, with the pretentious title, the Trump of Fame - Thomas D. Webb,
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editor and publisher. Each of its four pages was but little larger than an ordinary magazine page of to-day, and set in large type. Nothing in the first issue would have led a reader to anticipate the declaration of war with Great Britain, two days later, for it then took more than a week for news to come from Washington city. The Trump of Fame had the speedy changes of ownership usual to papers of that day. In 1816 Fitch Bissell was the proprietor. One September day, Benjamin Stevens, a recent arrival from Vermont, met Mr. Bissell at the postoffice, and in conversation about the paper expressed the opinion that a less high-sounding title would be more appropriate for a paper printed in the backwoods, and suggested that the Trump of Fame be called "The Western Reserve Chronicle, or Gazette, or something of that sort." Mr. Bissell scouted the suggestion with some heat; but three- weeks later the paper came out headed "Western Reserve Chronicle, volume I, No. I." With this change of name, it was enlarged to four columns on each of its four pages, the sheet being 18 x 22 inches. Under the name of the Chronicle the paper has continued to the present day, and is one of the leading country papers in Northwestern Ohio.
The Belmont Chronicle, of St. Clairsville, claims to date- from 1813, when Charles Hammond, who later earned fame as the founder of the Cincinnati Gazette, began a paper named the Federalist. When Mr. Hammond removed to the Queen City in 1823, the National Historian advocated the same prin- ciples. It was published by Horton J. Howard. The name of this paper was first changed to the Journal and Enquirer, and in 1836 to the Belmont Chronicle, which is its title to-day. A similar history is true of the St. Clairsville Gazette, which dates its beginning in 1812, but did not adopt the present title until 1825.
The drift of immigration through Cincinnati up the fertile valley of the Great Miami led to the settlement of Hamilton, and as a matter of course to the foundation of a paper. On June 22, 1814, the Hamilton Intelligencer was first issued. There were frequent changes of ownership, which is true of:
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all early Ohio papers, but the Butler County Democrat of to-day is its lineal successor.
The next Ohio newspaper in point of time is the Ohio Repository, of Canton, founded in 1815 by John Saxton, the grandfather of Ida Saxton Mckinley, widow of the martyred President. A notable fact regarding Mr. Saxton's editorials was that, from 1815 to 1871, the year of his death, he composed his editorials and put them in type by hand, instead of writing them and committing them to another compositor. Mr. Sax- ton was in many respects a remarkable man. He not only chronicled in the Repository the fall of the first Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, but set up the abdication of Napoleon III, after Sedan in 1870. His son, Thomas W. Saxton, succeeded him in the management of the paper, until his death in 1885. He established the daily edition in 1878. On his death, Wil- liam Mckinley, the executor of the Saxton estate, selected George B. Frease to take charge, which position he still holds. The Repository was the personal organ of Mr. Mckinley dur- ing the presidential campaigns of 1896 and 1900, and came into national prominence thereby.
The first newspaper in Pickaway county was issued Au- gust 9, 1817, by James Foster, a bookbinder. It was a folio, 162 by 93 inches. Its title was the Olive Branch. Several changes of names were made, but after the civil war began, it was called the Circleville Union, as indicating its political tenets. It is now entitled the Union-Herald.
Next comes the Delaware Gazette, founded with the name it has borne ever since, in 1818, by Drake and Hughes, two preachers. It was afterward published by Judge Ezra Griswold, referred to previously. In 1834, Abram Thomson became connected with it; and for 62 years he retained that interest, all of which time he was in editorial control, except the interval 1869-1871, when his partner, Capt. A. E. Lee, was editor. Abram Thomson was not only editor, but horticul- turist ; and to him is due the discovery and development of the Delaware grape - named from the town and county of his residence.
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The Springfield Republic, whose daily edition is called the Press-Republican, dates from 1817, when the Farmer was started - the first paper in that city and county. After the usual number of changes of name and proprietors, it was entitled the Republic in 1849. The Springfield Democrat dates from 1839, and is one of the few papers which has re- tained its name through its whole career.
The Cleveland Leader claims to date from 1818, assum- ing that the Gazette and Commercial Register, then founded, was the predecessor of the Herald, whose first issue was in October, 1819. It became a daily in 1837. The germ of the Leader was the Ohio American, founded in 1844 in Ohio City, now the West Side of Cleveland. It passed the next year into the hands of Edwin Cowles, then but 18 years of age. It was consolidated with the Democrat, a Free Soil paper, in 1848. In 1852 Joseph Medill, later the noted editor of the Chicago Tribune, established the Daily Forest City. There were too many papers for a city the size of Cleveland at that time, and a consolidation of papers and proprietors took place the next year, the paper taking the clumsy name of the Daily Forest City Democrat. In 1854 this was changed to the Leader. In 1815 the Herald was united with the Leader, the latter continuing as the title of the morning edition, while the evening issue was and is called the News and Herald.
The Hillsboro Gazette's first issue was dated June 18, 1818, when the only newspapers in Southern Ohio were those at Cincinnati and Chillicothe. Its founder was Moses Car- others, who guided its fortunes for ten years. It is one of the few early Ohio papers which still bear their original names.
The first paper in Gallia county was the Gazette, founded by Joshua Cushing, in November, 1818, and it has been in continuous publication ever since, now being known as the Gallipolis Journal, which title it has held since 1835.
In 1818, two years after Harrison county was formed, a newspaper was established at Cadiz, which had several names and many proprietors, until it passed into the ownership of Wm. R. Allison in 1840. He bestowed upon it the name Republican, which it has kept for the intervening 63 years.
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The Mansfield Shield is the oldest business institution in. that thriving city. It was the pioneer paper of Richland county. It claims to be the lineal descendant of the Olive, founded in 1818. The name Shield and Banner was given in 1838, by Judge Meredith, its proprietor, and the latter half was dropped a few years ago. In 1885, W. S. Cappeller began the publication of the News, the first daily in Mansfield, and it and the Shield are two of the most influential papers in that section of Ohio.
The Guernsey Times of Cambridge, had its beginning in September, 1824. Its first editor was John Aitken, a represen- tative of the Guernsey Island pioneers who settled in Guernsey County about 1806. Afterward it was edited by John and. Zaccheus Beatty, of the original settlers and town proprietors. and founders of the county and county seat. Later it had among its editors Hon. Charles J. Albright, who went from The Guernsey Times sanctum to the Congress of the United States, as did likewise Hon. Joseph D. Taylor, the brother and predecessor of Hon. D. D. Taylor, who is now, and has been for over fifty years, a printer, and the editor of a longer period than all of his predecessors, and who, while his brother was in the congress, was the representative of Guernsey County in the: Ohio Legislature.
From this time there was a rapid increase in the number of newspapers in Ohio. It is the design of this article to record by name all founded within the first quarter-century of statehood, ending with 1828. Beyond that date, this paper- would assume the character of a catalogue rather than a his- tory. Of existing papers established from 1818 to and includ- ing 1828, are the Painesville Telegraph and Sandusky Regis- ter, both dating from 1822; the Cambridge Times, 1824; Coshocton Age, 1825; the Athens Messenger and Herald, the. direct successor of the Mirror and Literary Messenger, founded by Hon. A. G. Brown, in 1825; Lancaster Gazette, 1826; the Holmes County Farmer, founded in 1828 by Wil- liam McDowell, as the Gazette, its present title having been retained since 1840; and the Clermont Sun, at Batavia,
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founded in 1828, with the famed Samuel Medary as its first editor.
This completes the roster, to the best knowledge and belief of the writer, of all the papers now existing in Ohio which were founded previous to the close of the first 25 years of her statehood - "errors and omissions excepted," as the bills of lading say. Any one familiar with the present newspapers of Ohio will rec- ognize the list as one of papers of high standing and influence in their respective sections. For it is as true in the newspaper bus- iness as in all other affairs of life that high ideals of duty, and energy and capacity in carrying them out, are the factors of true success.
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