Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/384

Rh substitute have the Portland job and remained on the coast. He was elected county clerk in 1876 and served three terms. It was during his tenure of this office that he began the work of putting Curry county journalism really on the map. He was elected representative in the legislature in 1884, and county treasurer in 1886, serving until 1892. He was in the publishing business from 1882 almost continuously until his death in 1929, in his eightieth year.

This was the man who acquired the Post in 1882 by purchase from J. H. Upton and Son (J. M.). Soon after moving the plant to Ellensburg he installed a Washington hand-press, added several cases of type and other equipment needed in getting out a newspaper. He now called it the Curry County Post. The paper was a weekly six-column folio, with a subscription list of about 300 in the early 80's. Land and timber notices were the mainstay of the paper, together with the official county printing. When, after several years, the name of the town was changed to Gold Beach, Mr. Sutton changed the name of the paper to the Gold Beach Gazette. He continued the paper until 1892, selling it then to R. D. Hume, who suspended it a short time later.

Soon Mr. Sutton went to San Francisco, purchased another plant, and, moving to Port Orford, gave that town its second paper, the Tribune. His first issue appeared May 10, 1892. The paper was a seven-column folio, with a subscription list said to be 500, at $1.50 a year. It wasn't all cash. Mrs. Turner recalls that her father accepted on subscription anything that could be used by a large family-"many times a sack of dry beans or potatoes."

The Suttons got out their papers under pioneer conditions. "My father with the aid of his children could do all the work," Mrs. Turner writes, "setting the type and printing one side of the paper, distributing the type, setting it again, and printing the other side. He made his own rollers for the presses, out of glue, lampblack, and other ingredients I do not remember, made the lye to wash the forms, and until the last few years would write by hand all the mailing list.

"In the early part of his newspaper career the mails would come in only once or twice a week, so the news that wasn't local was a little old, and, needless to say, everyone who visited this neck of the woods had his or her name in the paper."

All files were lost in a fire a few years ago.

After 12 years Mr. Sutton sold the paper to Walter Riley, who retired after a year, when Mr. Sutton resumed possession. He published the paper for two more years, then selling to Frank A. Stewart & Son (Hardy T. Stewart, editor), who changed the publication from Tuesday to Wednesday and carried on the paper for 16 years. The Stewarts sold back to Sutton and his son George. They in turn sold to F. W. Fulton, who after two years sold to a