and continued it with little intermission for twenty years. Samuel C. Crawford began as printer's devil for John Miller Murphy on the Olympia Standard thirty years or more ago. Beriah Brown, the senior of them all, recently died here, and his son Berry began "at the case" and other newspaper work as early as 1868.
The Columbian was the "pioneer newspaper west of the mountains, between the father of Oregon waters and Kamstkatka," as an editorial paragraph in the first number puts it. Messrs. Wiley & McElroy established it in Olympia September 11, 1852. Later its name was changed to the Pioneer, and not long afterward it was merged with the Democrat, a rival paper, under the name of Pioneer and Democrat. From the above date Olympia has never been without one or more weekly papers, and at times has enjoyed two daily papers at the same time.
The Puget Sound Courier was the pioneer paper at Steilacoom, which was started by Affleck & Gunn, May 19, 1854. It was Whig in politics, and as the population was overwhelmingly Democratic it soon died for lack of sustenance.
Mr. Charles Prosch, the dean of newspaperdom on Puget Sound, whose erect form and snow-white hair are familiar on the streets of Seattle, published the Puget Sound Herald at Steilacoom, beginning March 12, 1858, for about six years, and later other papers at Olympia.
The Northern Light appeared at Whatcom in 1858, under the management of W. Bausman & Co., during a few weeks of the height of the Fraser River gold rush, but its light was soon snuffed out.
The Port Townsend Register was started January 4, 1860, by a young man named Travers Daniels, but the field was not an encouraging one, and at the end of ten weeks he sold out to William T. Whitacre, who kept it alive until August, when it suspended.
