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How things have changed…
May 3, 2010 by TimHughes · 2 Comments
The John Scopes trial of 1925, called the “monkey trial” for his teaching of evolution in the classroom against Tennessee’s anti-evolution law, drew national attention, particularly with two notable attorneys on the case: William Jennings Bryan and Charles Darrow.
The “Bethlehem Globe” newspaper from Pennsylvania, July 10, 1925, reported the opening of the case with the front page heading: “Evolution Trial Opened By Prayer; Judge Has A Bible”. Fast forwarding some 85 years one would wonder if a trial with such religious over-tones would have been permitted to open in such a way. For better of for worse, it was a different era. It is a headline unlikely to be seen today.
An historical anecdote…
May 1, 2010 by TimHughes · Leave a Comment
The following item from the “Massachusetts Centinel” of Boston, August 29, 1787, is evidence of some timely humor when the country was awaiting the results of the Constitutional Convention.
First newspapers in Maine…
April 26, 2010 by TimHughes · 1 Comment
It may be a surprise to some that Maine did not become a state until 1820, much later than most of the other New England states which were among the original thirteen colonies. It was a part of Massachusetts in the 18th century and figured in the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which allowed Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, balanced by Maine as a free state.
Benjamin Titcomb, a native of Maine, was the first printer in the state and joining with Thomas Wait started the “Gazette and Weekly Advertiser” in Falmouth (now Portland) on January 1, 1785. But just a year later Titcomb left the newspaper and Wait changed the newspaper’s name to the “Cumberland Gazette“, Cumberland being the name of the county in which Falmouth was located. It changed names again six years later to the “Eastern Herald“.
Titcomb’s son, Benjamin Titcomb, Jr., started Maine’s second newspaper on Oct. 8, 1790, called the “Gazette of Maine” and six years later these first two newspapers would be combined to be the “Eastern Herald and Gazette of Maine“.
The other 18th century newspapers published in present-day Maine were the “Eastern Star” in Hallowell. 1794, the “Tocsin” also in Hallowell, 1795, the “Kennebec Intelligencer” in Augusta (then called Harrington) 1795, the “Wiscasset Telegraph” in 1796, “The Gazette” in in Portland, 1798, the “Wiscasset Argus” in 1797, the “Oriental Trumpet” of Portland, 1798, and the “Castine Journal” on Jan. 2, 1799. Many of these titles had a very short life.
First newspapers in Louisiana…
April 19, 2010 by TimHughes · Leave a Comment
Being a French settlement from the early 1700’s, it would be of no surprise that the first newspaper in present-day Louisiana was French: “Moniteur de la Louisiane” which began in New Orleans on March 3, 1794. Three years later it became the official mouthpiece of the government, and continued to print until the publisher’s death in July, 1814.
Louisiana’s first newspaper done by a publisher of English or American extraction was the “Union: New Orleans Advertiser and Price Current” by James Lyon, of Vermont, which began on Dec. 13, 1803. Just one day later Louisiana’s third newspaper began–a French publication–“Le Telegraphe, et le Commercial Advertiser“. Both these latter two endeavors began just a few months after the Louisiana Purchase. Actually “Le Telegraphe” began as a French publication but later changed to both French and English, a tradition which held true for many Louisiana newspapers at least through the Civil War.
James Gordon Bennett and his New York Herald…
April 8, 2010 by TimHughes · Leave a Comment
A book I am currently reading, “An Empire of Wealth” by John Steele Gordon, has a page or two concerning newspapers, mostly focused on the innovations of James Gordon Bennett (image to the left is from the Harper’s Weekly dated July 10, 1858) and his “New York Herald“, offering some insights new to me and likely new to you. It is a bit lengthy but has some interesting information I felt was worthy of sharing:
“The biggest difference between the newspapers of the pre-industrial world and those of today was politics. Most general-interest newspapers were the instruments of political factions, praising one party and excoriating all others. They were, in reality, little more than an editorial page wrapped in some highly tendentious news.
A Scots immigrant to New York, James Gordon Bennett, changed all that. Born in 1795 into one of Scotland’s few Catholic families, Bennett was always a man apart, which can be an asset for a journalist. He was also remarkably ugly, with severely crossed eyes. When a young journalist interviewed him in the 1850’s at his office across from New York’s City Hall, he reported that Bennett ‘looked at me with one eye, while he looked out at the City Hall with the other.’
Well educated in Aberdeen, he wrote his first piece of journalism about the Battle of Waterloo, when he was twenty, and four years later, sensing greater opportunity, immigrated to the United States. He worked at a series of newspapers from Boston to Charleston before settling in New York where, three times, he tried to found a newspaper that would expound Jacksonian principles. Each attempt was a failure.
Steam, however, was changing the newspaper business as it was changing everything else by the 1830’s. The new rotary presses, powered by steam, could turn out thousands of copies of a newspaper a night and at a much lower price than had been possible before. Bennett decided to try something new. On May 6, 1835, with $500 in capital, an office in a dank cellar, and himself as the only employee, Bennett began publishing the “New York Herald“.
Bennett made the Herald nonpartisan in its news articles, sought always to be the first with the news, and sold it to a mass audience by having it hawked on the streets at a penny a copy by the armies of newsboys that would quickly become a feature of the American urban scene for more than a hundred years. None of these ideas was original with Bennett. But it was he who put them all together for the first time. He also introduced a dazzling array of other journalistic innovations. He was the first to print a weather report and to cover sports regularly. He was the first to cover business news and stock prices in a general-interest newspaper. And while ‘respectable’ papers weren’t supposed to notice such things, when a beautiful prostitute was murdered in one of New York’s more fashionable brothels, Bennett played the story for all it was worth.
The “Herald’s” circulation soared, and other papers were forced to follow suit as the city, and then the country, became transfixed with the story. Within a few years the ‘Herald” was among the city’s most successful papers. Bennett traveled to Europe, where he signed up correspondents in London, Rome and Paris to supply the “Herald” with exclusive copy, the world’s first foreign correspondents. He fought Congress to establish the principle that out-of-town newspapers had as much right to the congressional press galleries as the local papers, the beginning of the Washington press corps. He even coined the use of the world ‘leak’, to refer to the stores slipped to reporters by politicians for their own purposes.
As the telegraph began to spread across the country, Bennett exploited it to the hilt. When the Mexican Was broke out, only two years after Morse’s successful demonstration, Bennett organized a consortium of newspapers to fund a pony express from New Orleans to Charleston, which was connected to New York by telegraph. The reports the New York papers published were often days ahead of the official reports arriving in Washington.
By the time of the Civil War the “Herald” was, by far, the largest and most influential newspaper in the country, and all other major papers had followed its model, profoundly transforming the newspaper business. Its daily circulation during the war reached as high as 400,000, many times the total circulation of all American newspaper combined fifty years earlier.”
The first newspaper in Kentucky…
April 5, 2010 by TimHughes · Leave a Comment
The first newspaper ever published west of the Allegheny Mountains was established in Lexington, in 1787, by John Bradford. It was then called the “Kentucke Gazette“, but the final “e” of Kentucky was afterward changed to “y”, in consequence of the Virginia legislature requiring certain advertisements to be inserted in the “Kentucky Gazette“.
Go To: http://www.kentuckygazette.com/
This paper was born of the necessities of the times. The want of a government independent of Virginia was then universally felt, and the second convention that met in Danville, in 1785, to discuss that subject, resolved, “That to ensure unanimity in the opinion of the people respecting the propriety of separating the district of Kentucky from Virginia and forming a separate state government, and to give publicity to the proceedings of the convention, it is deemed essential to the interests of the country to have a printing press.”
John Bradford informed the committee that he would establish a paper if the convention would guarantee to him the public patronage. To this the convention acceded, and in 1786 Bradford sent to Philadelphia for the necessary materials. He had already received every encouragement from the citizens on Lexington, and at a meeting of the trustees in July, it was ordered “that the use of a public lot be granted to John Bradford free, on condition that he establish a printing press in Lexington; the lot to be free to him as long as the press is in town,”
At last, after many months on the route, the precious printing material arrived, and on August 18, 1787, appeared the first number of the first newspaper ever published in the then western wilderness. It was a quaint little brown thing, about the size of a half sheet of common letter paper, “subscription price 18 shillings per annum, advertisements of moderate length 3 shillings.” The first number is without a heading, and contains one advertisement, two short original articles, and the following apology from the editor:
“My customers will excuse this, my first publication, as I am much hurried to get an impression by the time appointed. A great part of the types fell into pi [disorder] in the carriage of them from Limestone (Maysville) to this office, and my partner, which is the only assistant I have, through an indisposition of the body, has been incapable of rendering the smallest assistance for ten days past. JOHN BRADFORD.”
Source: Much of the credit for this post goes to George W. Ranck’s “History of Lexington, Kentucky…”
To laminate or not…
April 3, 2010 by TimHughes · Leave a Comment
Fellow collector Morris Brill asks, “What are your thoughts of laminating newspapers?”
In a word–or three–don’t do it. Lamination is a one-way process, by which a newspaper is permanently sealed between two large pieces of plastic, heated such that the two plastic sheets bind to one another. Newspapers laminated as such cannot be retrieved without considerable damage.
Collectors typically like to touch and feel their newspapers, and if kept in a protective folder, a Mylar bag or sleeve, or even if encapsulated (similar to lamination but the only permanent binding is at the edges, beyond the margins of the newspaper) this can be done. But if laminated a newspaper cannot be returned to its unprotected state.
Now, if a newspaper is very fragile, has more of a personal, family, or sentimental attachment and there is no concern for potential collector value, then lamination might be an alternative for permanent protection.
The first newspapers in Kansas…
March 30, 2010 by TimHughes · Leave a Comment
The first permanent settlement in Kansas was made at Fort Leavenworth in 1827, but until 1854 when the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by congress the region remained a part of the somewhat indefinitely bounded Indian Territory.
Early in 1834, missionary Jotham Meeker set up his printing press–the first press to be used west of the Missouri River–at the Shawnee Baptist Mission in present Johnson County. That year he published hymns, religious tracts, and other materials that were the first items printed in Kansas.
On February 24, 1835, Meeker printed at the Shawnee Mission the first number of the “Shawnee Sun” (Siwinowe Kesibwi), the first periodical publication in Kansas, and the first printed entirely in a Native American language. The paper was issued at irregular intervals from 1835 to as late as 1844, probably in limited editions of 150 or 100 copies. Measuring about 6 3/4 inches by 10 3/4 inches, the paper had two 8 1/2-inch columns of text per page.
The “Shawnee Sun” circulated among the Indians at and near the mission settlement. Today only one copy of one issue is known to have survived–the issue for November 1841, now in the library of the University of Missouri at Kansas City.
The “Kansas Weekly Herald” was established at Leavenworth on Sept. 15, 1854 by William Osborn and William Adams. It was a truly pioneer enterprise as is evidenced by the fact that the town site was occupied only by four temporary tents. The editor in his first number noted: “Our editorials have been written and our proof corrected while sitting on the ground with a big shingle for a table.”
Another newspaper was begun in Kickapoo, Kansas, in 1854 titled the “Pioneer“, and a year later the first newspaper at Topeka was established, the “Kansas Freeman“.
The first newspapers in Iowa…
March 22, 2010 by TimHughes · 1 Comment
The state of Iowa had various “owners” over the last 300+ years. It became a French possession in 1682, in 1762 was ceded to Spain, in 1800 it was returned to France, who in 1803 passed ownership to the United States under the terms of the Louisiana Purchase.
In 1804-5 as part of the District of Louisiana it was under the government of the Indiana Territory. During the next seven years it was in the Missouri Territory, and from 1821-34 it was a part of the unorganized territory of the United States. From 1834-6 it was part of the Michigan Territory, and from 1836-8 a part of the Wisconsin Territory. In 1838 the Wisconsin Territory was divided & the western portion was named the Iowa Territory, which in 1846 was admitted as a state.
The first printing in the district was in 1836 when John King, who moved from Ohio to Dubuque, believed the town should have a newspaper and on May 11, 1836 began printing the “Visitor“, the first newspaper in Iowa. A year later the name changed to the “Iowa News“, and 4 years later to the “Miners’ Express“. Iowa’s second newspaper was the “Western Adventurer and Herald of the Upper Mississippi” (not sure how they fit that in the masthead) begun by Dr. Isaac Galland on June 28, 1837 in Montrose. It lasted for just a few months when the equipment was sold to James Edwards who took it to Fort Madison & on March 24, 1838 the first issue of the Fort Madison “Patriot” was published.
Uncut newspapers: leave as they are?
March 20, 2010 by TimHughes · 1 Comment
Fellow collector Morris Brill poses an interesting question worth sharing with others, along with my thoughts on the issue.
I suspect we have all encountered “uncut” newspapers from the 19th century, issues which are eight pages in length but which are essentially one large sheet of paper printed on both sides, then folded twice to produce the eight pages. This is how they came off the printing presses . Morris inquires:
“For the sake of maintaining the monetary value of such a newspaper is it best to leave the paper in this one piece condition or is it best to cut the paper so it folds normally like a book and the pages can be turned individually?”
Uncut issues are, for the most part, those which have survived the years by not being bound, kept loose by previous owners and eventually finding their way into the hands of collectors. Given that the vast majority of early newspapers in the collector market came from bound volumes once stored by libraries or other institutions then “disbound” into individual issues, uncut newspapers are relatively few in number. Once bound all margins, save for the spine, are guillotined at the bindery to produce an even, book-like edge thus losing the attachment at the top.
Since uncut issues are newspapers in the original state, as they were sold on the streets, my preference would be to keep them as such. Most collectibles tend to be more desirable in their original state: never clean an old coin; never paint an antique wagon; don’t removed the aged patina from an antique desk, etc. Are such newspapers more clumsy to read? Yes, to some degree. But they can be folded back and all 8 pages read with little difficulty. It’s obviously how it was done years ago as I’ve purchased several boxes of uncut 19th century newspapers which were folded many different ways, left as such by the reader.
They only time I might suggest cutting the top of an uncut sheet is the rare occasion when an issue was bound, causing all four leaves to be attached at the spine, yet the tops have not been trimmed. In such situations the newspaper cannot be folded back because of the attachment at the spine. I would take an exacto knife and cut the very top along the fold. Not much else can be done if the interior pages are to be read.
Collectors may have noticed that we charge a small premium for uncut newspapers. A downside to an uncut issue is they tend to be more worn than those bound as they have not been protected through the years by the bindings, but if one can obtain an issue which is both uncut and in great condition–and contains the Gettysburg Address–there’s a great item for any collection!