FIRST NEWSPAPERS OF SOUTHERN OREGON AND THEIR EDITORS
By George H. Himes
The first paper in Oregon south of Salem was the Umpqua Weekly Gazette,[1] a five-column folio, the printed page being 11⅞ × 18 inches, issued at Scottsburg, Umpqua County, Oregon Territory, April 28, 1854—devoted to literature, agriculture, mining news, general intelligence, etc. The printing office was in Harris's new building, corner of Main and Yoncalla streets. Price, $5.00 a year; $3.00 for six months. Advertisements on reasonable terms; one square, 10 lines or less, first insertion, $2.00. Great reductions on yearly contracts. The first editor was Daniel Jackson Lyons; publisher, William J. Beggs. Politically the paper was Democratic. There was a sprinkling of Whigs in Umpqua County, but they were in a hopeless minority. The Republican party was just emerging from its shell in some of the states east of the Mississippi river, but as yet not a member of that party had strayed far enough away from home to get into Oregon Territory, so far as known. According to the custom of those days, job printing was solicited.
The body type in the printer's language of that day was bourgeois, or nine-point of the present day; and the smallest type—that used in advertising, poetry, extracts, etc.—was minion, or seven-point of the present time.
Mr. Lyons was born in Cork, Ireland, March 28, 1813, and came to the United States with his parents in 1826, who settled in Louisville, Kentucky. As a lad in
- ↑ The Gazette was the seventh newspaper in Oregon Territory, those preceding it being in the following order: Oregon Spectator, Oregon City, February 5, 1846; Oregon Free Press, April, 1848, Oregon City; The Oregon American and Evangelical Unionist, at a farm house, near present-day Hillsboro, June 7, 1848; The Western Star, November 21, 1850, Milwaukie, changed to Oregon Weekly Times June 5, 1851, after removed to Portland; Oregonian, December 4, 1850, Portland; The Oregon Statesman, March 28, 1851. The Spectator was the first newspaper upon the Pacific Coast as well as the first in Oregon, as it antedates the first paper in California by six months and ten days.
