NOTABLE ARKANSANS
He was born in 1795 on Long Island, N.Y. After the death of his father, his mother indentured him to the publisher of the Suffolk Gazette. He was 21 when his indenture period ended. For a couple of years he worked for New York book publishers. In search of a better life, he travelled to Kentucky and Tennessee where he was able to get printing jobs and saved enough money to buy a small second-hand wooden press. He loaded the press, along with paper, type cases, ink and other incidentals onto a keelboat in the Cumberland River and headed for the capital of the new Arkansas Territory, Arkansas Post, a small wilderness settlement. The trip took more than a month, the last leg of which was in a large dugout canoe. A month later, Nov. 19, 1819, he published his first newspaper.
Initially, he kept the editorial policy independent; but on important issues he had to choose sides, which would often put him and his newspaper in danger. In 1821, when the territorial capital was moved upstream, he immediately moved with it to the new settlement of Little Rock. He soon became a leader in the drive for Arkansas statehood.
Little did he know the small newspaper, which he had named The Arkansas Gazette, would still exist 200 years later as The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Who was this original publisher of the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi?
Who was this original publisher of the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi?