April 16, 1851 - April 16, 2021 Celebrating 170 years in Marshall County
The Plymouth Pilot was first published this day 170 years ago. In celebration of our birthday, we’re showing off our roots with the first ever edition, originally called The Plymouth Pilot. It was published every Wednesday by John Q. Howell. The price of the paper was $1.50 per year if paid in advance or within two months after subscribing. If you paid within six months, that price was $2. And anytime after that was $2.50.
The front page looks a lot different now than it did 170 years ago. Poetry, short stories, tales from 1812, a love story, and even tales from other newspapers graced the front page. Here are but a few headlines:
• “A Mother’s Love” was about the writer having to witness a mother being confronted with her infant’s death. “and as she bent over its lifeless form and wiped away the cold
death damp with holy affection - as she gazed upon its glassy, motionless eye sunk beneath its half-closed lid and its graceful limbs livid and stiffened by the touch of death. I have listened to her stifled shriek, and seen her turn away from this last remnant of mortality, a lone, desolate, and heart-stricken being.”
• “Starting in the World” was about parents and children. The narrative talked about parents tring to leave enough for their children to get a “start in the world.”
“Getting a young man afloat with money left him by his relatives, is like tying bladders under him-he loses his bladders and he goes to the bottom. Teach him to swim, and he will never need the bladders. Give your child a sound education, and you have done well for him.”
• “A Tale of 1812” talked about a spy in the camp during the War of 1812. “Many sacrifices, no doubt, would be willingly made of personal comfort and of pecuniary profit; but if in the hour of need, personal sacrifices weigh not a feather with the American, as the past and the present strongly exemplifies.”
• “The Wild Woman” was an article from The Houston Telegraph talking about the “capture of the wild woman of the Navida.” As the article details, a party of hunters accidentally came upon the camp of a singular “creature and captured her.”
“She is an African negress who fled to those wilds when the settlements were deserted just after Fanning’s defeat, and she has been wandering like an oarang outang for a period of about fifteen years,” states the article.
It said that her diet consisted of acorns, nuts, and fruit.
• “Washington Monument” is an article that details the dimensions of the Washington Monument as it was just being constructed at the time.
“The foundation was laid 8 feet below the surface of the earth. When the basis has been thus prepared, the first course of marble commenced, consisting of large blocks, constituting the outside surface of the monument, while blue stone is continued up within. The dimensions at the bottom, from outside to outside, are 55 feet; from which they are gradually to diminish to the top 517 feet from the ground, where they will shrink to 33 feet.”
• “church Incident” talks about the “goodly city” of brunswick, New Jersey and betsey baker who was described as “very nervous hysterical, fidgetty old maid.”
“It happened one Sabbath morning that betsey was more than usually devout and ejaculatory, so noisy, in truth, that the minister could not stand it no longer, and he ordered some one to ‘take the woman out of church.’ Two young bucks immediately attempted to carry out the Domine’s wishes; one taking betsy by the heels and the other by the shoulders. She made a great lament, and struggled violently, and as they bore her down the broad aisle she screamed at the top of her voice, ‘Oh, Lord God! I am served worse than my Savior, He rode through the streets of Jerusalem upon one ass, but I ride upon two!’”
because of that, the article said that the church “was not in a very proper mood for devotion” and went home. The “two young bucks” did not show themselves again at that church.
There’s one article that’s called “Facts in Natural History.” Here are some of those ‘facts’:
• The grain worm or weevil began its course of destruction in Vermont, about the year 1828, and it progresses in the course it takes from ten to fifteen miles a year. It has not reached Western New York to any extent; but the destroyer is on its march, and desolation will follow its tracks in this great wheat growing region.
• Rose bugs has been so common in some of the Eastern States, that on the sea shore they have floated in winrows on the sand, having been driven into the sea by winds and drowned. They have only made their appearance in the region in any considerable quantities, within three or four years.
• The cut worm is of recent origin. The first time it was noticed as doing much damage was during 1816 and 1817, noted as the cold year, when the whole northern country approached the very brink of famine. They are now universal.
• The Hessian fly was introduced, it is supposed by the foreign mercenaries in 1777, on Long Island, from their baggage or in the forage of their horses. It has proved the greatest pest on this continent with perhaps the exception of the weevil.
In closing, it’s interesting to see what made the front page of the paper all those years ago. It’s also interesting to consider the language that was used back then, and how it compares to the standards that the newspaper has today.
We hope that you’ve enjoyed this glance into history. From everyone here at the Pilot News Group, thank you for supporting us and reading the paper. With your continued support, we hope to be around for another 170 years!
To celebrate both April as National Poetry Month and the Pilot News 170th birthday, we are happy to present the first poem ever printed by the Pilot News in the very first edition on April 16, 1851.
Return of Spring
Dear as the dove, whose wafting wing The green leaf ransomed from the main, Thy genial glow, returning Spring, comes to our shores again;
For thou hast been a wanderer long, On many a fair and foreign strand, In balm and beauty, sun and song, Passing from land to land.
Thou bring’st the blossoms to the bee, To earth a robe of emerald dye, The leaflet to the naked tree,
And rainbow in the sky;
I feel thy blest benign control
The pulses of my youth restore; Opening the spring of sense and soul, To love and joy once more.
I will not people thy green bowers, With sorrow’s pale and spectre band; Or blend with hine the faded flowers Of memory’s distant land,
For thou went surely never given To wake regret from pleasures gone; but like an angel sent from Heaven, To soothe creation’s groan.
Then, while the groves thy garlands twine, Thy spirit breathes in flower and tree. My heart shall kindle at thy shrine, And worship God in thee;
And in some calm, sequestered spot, While listening to thy choral strain, Past griefs shall be awhile forgot,
And pleasures bloom again.