Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/369

360 November 19, 1924, he was southwestern Oregon correspondent for the Portland Telegram, Seattle and San Francisco papers, the Timberman, and the Four-L Bulletin.

Now let us trace the earlier journalistic history of Coos county. "The locality (in western Oregon) longest without a newspaper," says Bancroft Frances Fuller Victor] was Coos Bay, which, although settled early, isolated by a lack of roads from the interior, and having considerable business, had no printing press until October 1870, when the Monthly Guide was started at Empire City, a sheet of four pages about 6×4 inches in size. It ran until changed into the Coos Bay News in March 1873, when it was enlarged to 12×18 inches. In September of the same year it was removed to Marshfield and again enlarged.

Orvil Dodge, historian of southwestern Oregon, however, contends that "a six by nine sheet called the Bumblebee" appeared in 1869 and was, therefore, the first paper to appear on the bay. It is, indeed, questionable whether a publication issued as in frequently as once a month, like the Guide, could really be called a newspaper, and even more questionable whether a publication like the Bumblebee, appearing apparently only once, can claim such classification.

But still we're not out of the woods on this question. Under the heading Empire City Ayer's Directory in the seventies lists the Coos County Record (1871), edited and published by Watson & Webster, (4 pages 23×32, $2.50, circulation 328) and in 1877 lists the paper under Marshfield, failing to list it in 1878. The only newspaper listed for Marshfield in Pettengill's Newspaper Directory for 1878 is the Coos Bay News, published every Wednesday, official organ of Coos county, $3 a year.

Dodge notes the Coos County Record, published by M. L. Hanscam, but says it was a venture made in 1873, "after the News came to light."

With the claim of the Monthly Guide and the Bumblebee thrown out, the palm for priority of publication goes, it seems, to the News, started in March 1873. Ayer's date for the Record is 1874. The paper was listed in the 1875 Ayer's Directory as a Thursday weekly, 4 pages, 21×38, $2.50, C. W. Tower and M. L. Hanscam editors and publishers, and is characterized as the "only Republican paper in the county." In 1876 the paper was credited to Empire City, the next year moved back to Marshfield under Watson & Webster, and in 1878 is not listed at all.

The News, built on the Monthly Guide, was established at Marshfield in 1875. The publisher was T. G. Owen, and the editor J. M. Siglin. Two years later the paper was bought from Owen by George A. Bennett, H. R. Gale, and J. M. Siglin. T. B. Merry, who was to have been editor, was forced to withdraw because of ill-health,