Page:History of Southeast Missouri 1912 Volume 1.djvu/589

 CHAPTER XXXVIII THE NEWSPAPERS Cape Girardeau — The First Paper — Bollinger — Butler — Carter — Dunklin — Iron — Jefferson — ]Iadison — Mississippi — New Madrid — Pemiscot — Perry — Reynolds — Ripley — St. Francois — Ste. Genevieve — Scott — Stoddard — Wash- ington — Wayne — The Great Work of Newspapers. This chapter is intended to give an account of the newspapers of this district. It is hardly possible that it is entirely full and accurate, because of the difficulty in ascer- taining all the facts concerning some of the early papers. It does include within it, how- -ever, a mention of the principal papers that have been published from time to time in this part of the state, and it is believed that it has a record of all the papers now being pub- lished. Newspaper enterprise began in South- east Missouri at a very early date. The settlers soon felt the need of some medium for the exchange of news, and a forum for the discussion of public questions. It was, perhaps, this latter need that led to the founding of the earliest papers, for it was not until the great discussion which arose from the admission of the state into the Union, and the formation of its constitution, that a paper was published here. So far as can now be ascertained, the first paper in Southeast Missouri, and the second one published outside of the city of St. Louis, was the Missouri Herald, the publication of which was begun in 1819, at Jackson, by T. E. Strange. Strange soon transferred the paper to James Russell who, in 1825, sold it to William Joluison. Johnson changed the name of the paper to the Independent Pa- triot, and later to The Mercury. In 1831 it passed from Johnson to R. W. Renfroe and Greer W. Davis, who published it for a short time imder the title of the Jackson Eagle. In 1835 its name was changed to the South- ern Advocate and State Journal. It was moved to Cape Girardeau and published there at first by Dr. Patrick Henry Davis, and later by Robert Burns. In 1845 it was returned to Jackson and was now called the Jackson Review, being published by Wagner and McFerron. In 1849 its name was again changed to the Southern Advocate, the pub- lisher being H. S. McFarland. McFarland published it only until 1850 when it went into the hands of J. W. Limbaugh, who renamed it the Southern Democrat. It was Democratic in politics, and its motto was "The constitu- tion in its purity, the bulwark of American liberty." Limbaugh continued its publica- tion until his death in 1852. At that time the name was changed to the Jeffersonian, and the publication continued by Robert Vol. 1—3 4 529