A History of the Plymouth Republican

Access over 20 years of the Marshall County Republican and other Plymouth newspapers at Chronicling America
Access over 20 years of the Marshall County Republican and other Plymouth newspapers at Chronicling America.

Click on the hyperlinks throughout this essay to access digitized issues of the newspapers.

In March 1852, Richard Corbaley acquired the Plymouth Pilot, situated in an agricultural community in north-central Indiana, and changed the title to the Plymouth Banner.  The paper changed ownership five times during the next four and a half years.  In 1855 the paper became the Plymouth Weekly Banner.  Then, on the eve of the 1856 election, Ignatius Mattingly purchased the paper and changed its name to the Marshall County Republican.  While the Banner had aimed to be not “a strictly political paper – but a home newspaper,” the Republican intended to “advocate, zealously and fearlessly” for the Republican Party’s candidates and causes.

Mattingly owned the paper until 1868, and was succeeded by ten other proprietors over the next decade.  In February 1878, John W. Siders and Walter L. Piper bought the Marshall County Republican.  Although Siders’s partners would change over the years, Siders retained ownership of the newspaper until 1890.  Siders shortened its name to the Plymouth Republican in December 1878. He expanded the four-page weekly to eight pages by 1882 and increased circulation from 960 in 1880 to 1,382 in 1890 in the city of 2,570 residents.

In 1890, Siders shared editorial duties with his partner, Edward S. Brooke, before leaving the paper the following year.  Brooke established a daily edition in April 1896 called the Plymouth Evening News and continued publishing the Republican as a weekly.  Rolla B. Oglesbee owned and operated both papers beginning in April 1897, before selling them to William G. Hendricks the following year.  Hendricks combined the Republican and the Evening News into the Plymouth Tribune in 1901.  The Tribune reached a peak circulation of 1,800 in 1911.  Hendricks sold the paper that year to Samuel E. Boys, owner of the Plymouth Daily Chronicle.  Boys combined the Tribune and Chronicle into a single newspaper, which he renamed the Plymouth Republican, and continued issuing daily and weekly editions.  In 1922, Boys discontinued the weekly edition, and recalling the newspaper’s first incarnation, re-titled it the Plymouth Daily Pilot.  The Daily Pilot operated until Boys merged it with the Plymouth Daily News to form the Plymouth Pilot-News in 1947.

A History of the Wabash Express

Wabash Express (weekly edition) available at Chronicling America, Library of Congress.
Wabash Express (weekly edition) available at Chronicling America, Library of Congress.

On December 13, 1841, John Dowling established a Whig weekly titled the Wabash Express in Terre Haute, Indiana, located on the banks of the Wabash River.  John’s brother, Thomas Dowling, had previously owned the Wabash Courier, and one of the terms of sale prohibited Thomas from establishing another Terre Haute newspaper for five years.  Thomas recruited his brother to establish the Express in his stead to circumvent the provision.  John Dowling sold the Wabash Express in 1845 to David S. Danaldson.  In January 1851, Danaldson issued a short-lived daily edition, the Daily Wabash Express.  John B. L. Soule purchased the Express in November 1853 and edited the paper until June 28, 1854.  Some sources claim that it was Soule who coined the famous phrase, “Go west young man,” while editing the paper.

Daily Wabash Express available through Chronicling America at Library of Congress.
Daily Wabash Express available through Chronicling America at Library of Congress.

Robert N. Hudson began operating the Express in September 1855.  Hudson also acquired the press of the Know Nothing supporting Terre Haute Daily American around this time. He established a permanent daily, the Daily Express, in addition to continuing the paper’s weekly edition.  In 1857, Hudson acquired the Wabash Courier and merged it into the Express’s operations as well.  “Devoted to the Whig Policy” continued to appear below the Express’s title well into 1859, even though the Whig Party had collapsed several years before.  In 1856, the Express endorsed candidates of the People’s Party, a forerunner of the Republican Party in Indiana.

Charles Cruft purchased the Wabash Express in 1861 and owned it throughout the Civil War, even while serving as a brigadier general in the Union Army.  In 1867, Cruft altered the title to the Terre-Haute Daily Express.  Circulations for the weekly and daily editions of the Express neared 1,000 in 1869.  Cruft sold the paper in 1872 to the Express Printing Company.  From 1875-1879, the publishers operated the paper as a Greenback Party organ and retitled it the Terre Haute Dollar Express.  They also started a Sunday edition in 1878.  In August 1879, William R. McKeen acquired the paper, changing its name back to the Terre Haute Express.  He sold it in May 1882, and in that same year Mary Hannah Krout briefly served as the editor of the Express, likely making her among the first female editors of an Indiana newspaper.  In 1883, George M. Allen, the new owner, added a second daily edition published every evening, which was short lived.  Allen also instituted other changes: the weekly edition increased to eight pages around 1888, the daily edition expanded to eight pages during the 1890s, and the weekly edition changed to a semi-weekly in 1897.  Allen sold the Terre Haute Express in March 1899 to a stock company led by McKeen.  Daily circulation reached 3,000 copies in 1900.  After a nearly 62-year run, the last issue of the Express appeared on April 29, 1903.  The non-partisan Terre Haute Morning Star succeeded the Express and until late 1904 carried its name on the masthead as the Terre Haute Morning Star and Express.

The First African-American Newspaper in Indianapolis Digitized

117 issues of the Indianapolis Leader (1879-1882) are available here.
117 issues of the Indianapolis Leader (1879-1882) are available at Hoosier State Chronicles.

The Indianapolis Leader began in August 1879 as the city’s first black newspaper.  Three brothers, Benjamin, Robert, and James Bagby published the four-page, Republican oriented weekly with the motto “An Equal Chance and Fair Play.”  The Bagbys advertised the paper as follows: “Let every colored man who favors the elevation of his race subscribe for the Leader; and let every white man who believes that slavery was a crime against humanity and that it is the duty of the ruling race to aid the Negro in his struggle for moral, social and intellectual elevation do likewise.”  A correspondent to the Leader wrote, “The interchange of ideas and opinions so judiciously fostered by the Leader is most beneficial to the race in every way….It is a great educator.”  The Leader encouraged northern migration for southern African Americans, and carried society news for Indianapolis’s African-American community.  The Leader’s reported circulation in 1884 was 3,000.  Two other African-American newspapers debuted around this time, the Indianapolis Freeman (1884) and the Indianapolis Colored  World (1883).

The Bagby’s sold the Leader in 1885, and its transition at that point is unclear although it ceased to be an African-American newspaper.  By 1886, Edward Hutchins was editing and publishing the Leader as a four-page, Greenback affiliated weekly.  Vermillion County farmers Andrew J. and Lewis H. Johnson acquired it the next year, before Thomas J. Sharp took over as editor and publisher in 1888.  Sharp advertised the Leader as “The great Union Labor paper of Indiana….It circulates…chiefly among farmers and the laboring people.”  Sharp reported a circulation of 3,200 in 1888, but the figures fell to 2,300 by 1890.  The falling readership perhaps prompted Sharp to sell the paper to John Medert in 1890.  Sharp returned as editor in 1891, but the Leader ceased publication sometime that year.

A history of the Jasper Weekly Courier

The Jasper Weekly Courier, click to access 3,232 issues between 1858-1922 at Hoosier State Chronicles.

The Jasper Weekly Courier debuted on March 19, 1858 in Jasper, Indiana.  Jasper, the county seat of Dubois County in southern Indiana,was an agricultural trade center near iron and coal deposits.  John Mehringer, Rudolphus Smith, and Clement Doane published the Courier as an organ of the Democratic Party.  The Courier was the first newspaper published in the county since the American Eagle left Jasper in 1848 after a two year publication run.  On November 1, 1859, Doane became sole proprietor of the Courier.  The paper endorsed Stephen A. Douglas in the 1860 presidential election.  The Courier drew criticism early in the Civil War for being disunionist.  Doane fired back with an editorial affirming his loyalty, but lamented “a Union which requires bayonets and bullets to keep it together.”  In 1872, Doane expanded the four page [five column] weekly to eight pages [also five columns].  He continued to publish the newspaper until his death in 1904.  His son, Benjamin E., assumed publishing duties until his death in 1922.  Benjamin Doane’s children briefly tried to maintain the Courier, but the newspaper’s publication ceased in July 1922.

For most of its sixty-four year existence, the Courier was the oldest, continuously published, English language newspaper in Dubois County.  Jasper’s population ranged from 1,000 to 2,000 during the Courier’s lifetime, and the newspaper’s reported circulation ranged from 350 in 1869 to 750 in 1920.  Since the county had a large German speaking population, the very first issue of the Courier bore an advertisement in German announcing, “Advertisements in German will always be handled in this office in the best and cheapest manner.”  In 1867, a German language newspaper, the Signal, premeried in nearby Huntingburg to better serve German speaking residents of the county, and eventually boasted a larger circulation than any other nineteenth-century Dubois County newspaper.  The Courier’s first viable English language competitor, the Jasper Times, debuted in 1879 as a Democratic organ.  The Times converted to a Republican newspaper in 1883, and by 1890 reportedly out-circulated the Courier, 700 issues to 572.  Despite this success the Times folded in 1891.  Four years later in 1895, the Jasper Herald premiered.  The Herald was also a Democratic voice, and eventually superseded the Courier with circulations over 1,000 in the 1910s.