My friends - Today we are going to look at the names and owners of early newspapers in Calloway and Graves counties and, in later posts, at the other counties in the JP region. First, however, some housekeeping. As many of you may know, RootsWeb did some moving around last week with some of their mail servers, which caused some UP addresses to change. These addresses had been "whitelisted" by ISP's all over the country so that spam filters would not stop the delivery of RootsWeb messages. There were some notable problems, even after the ISP's were notified, in getting the new IP addresses whitelisted. This seems to have affected AOL users more severely than with some other ISP's. I understand that RootsWeb and AOL are working on getting all of that resolved, and hopefully, such will occur soon. I mention this here not to encourage any discussion of it, but just as a notification in case any of our AOL subscribers were unaware of it. Most AOL based mail seems now to be going through, and hopefully, it will all be flowing again without problems. This JP List, and the other county lists which I host in the JP region, have been relatively quiet over the past week, which may be good, since our AOL subscribers would not, as a result, have to explore the JP List Archives to see what messages had been posted. In the 1960's Victor Portmann did a considerable amount of research on 19th century and early 20th century newspapers in KY. We are going to look at what he found, insofar as the JP region is concerned. Shown below are those newspapers which he found for Calloway and Graves counties. Some of these lasted no more than a few years, while others endured. In looking at these different newspapers, we need to remember that, in many - probably most cases - there is little or nothing available in the way of copies of their issues, until very late in the 19th century and on into the 20th century. Just as an aside - I have not forgotten about the brief histories of the various Masonic lodges in the JP which I indicated I would be posting. I am working on those. They will be coming along in the near future. -B ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Calloway County - Early Newspapers with Names of Publisher/Editor Murray Gazette - 1874 - Dr. E.S.Gaillard. Short lived. The Calloway News - 1879 - Calloway News Association, W.O.Wear, Manager.Last issue 1890 The Calloway Times - 1895 - W.O.Wear - continued until 1927; consolidated with the Ledger The Ledger - 1878 - Logan Curd & Brothers. Later owned by John McElrath Meloan. In 1927, the owner, Joe T.Lovett consolidated it with the Calloway Times The Saturday Item - 1893 - John McElrath Meloan. Went out of business in less than 2 years First District Republican - 1894 - 1894 - Thomas W. Patterson - Ceased operation within 2 years. ~~~~~~~~ Graves County The Southern Yeoman Democratic - 1860 - C.C.Coulter - Shut down by Union soldiers during the War Between the States and did not reappear. The Jackson Purchase - 1869 - A.C.Caperton; in 1870 sold to E.K.Warren. Name changed in 1885 to Mayfield Mirror by R.J. Beaumont, who had bought it. In 1905, name changed to Mayfield Sentinel. Paper ceased operation by 1908. Banner of Temperance - 1873 - B.F.Briggs & V.O.Watson. In 1875, name was changed to Mayfield Monitor. Publication suspended in 1907. Mayfield Leader - 1878 - R.S.Murrell & Ed Watson. Suspended operations in 1880. The Ripsaw - 1878 - J.W.Leech - a muckraking newspaper which ceased operatiopns within two years. Mayfield Democrat - 1894 - Erve Johnson - numerous ownership changes over a 5 year period, name changed to the Index-Democrat, ceased operations in 1900. Mayfield Messenger - 1900 - Lee Elmore - many changes in ownership over the years. Mayfield Times - 1916 - Gayle Robbins & Erve Johnson. Later merged with the Messenger. The Outlook(published in Wingo) - 1902 - Matt McNeely. Ceased operations in 5 years. The Tribune(Wingo) - 1913 - J.W.Lloyd - ceased operations in 1918. The Apostolic Church(Christian Church newspaper) - 1880 - C.H.Kimball & W.L.Butler. Operations moved to Louisville in 1884. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++