Page:History of the newspapers of Beaver County, Pennsylvania.djvu/20

 6 HISTORY OF BEAVER COUNTY PAPERS. and saw mill ; Beaver Falls, then Brighton, had a few lots laid out on the Walnut bottoms, but gave no promise of the present growth and prosperity; New Brighton had not even a name and about its only distinction was Wolf's flouring mill near the present Tenth street bridge ; Sharon, now Bridgewater, had been the scene of Burr's operations in the building of boats; and everywhere in the valley of the Beaver and along the banks of the Ohio, was a dense wilderness, forests that had never been fully penetrated, and nothing but the quiet, and stillness and loneliness of the almost unbroken wilds that but a few years before had been the haunts of the Indians. None of the comforts of modern life were to be had, communi- cation with the great outside world was a question of months, and the solitude and monotony of the pioneer life, was scarcely conducive to a condition where a news- paper would find ready acceptance, and receive such sup- port as to enable it to live. What the equipment of these early papers was, is known only in part, but it was of necessity simple and crude. The printer who laboriously picked the separate pieces from his case of type, and found it impossible to put in type even the limited amount of copy of the period, would have regarded it an evidence of insanity for any one to predict the wonderful type setting or type casting machines of the present. The presses of that early day were typical only of the magnificent ones of today. The first press then used in the coimty, was probably the Eamage press, which printed one page at a time, with but vei-y slow speed arid moderate mechanical skill. This was followed by the Franklin press, some- what of an improvement, which in later years was super- ceded by the Washington hand press, well known to many printers yet living. The type was fairly good and looked tolerably well, and the paper used was coarse in texture and poor in appearance, but it has stood well the