ORIGIN OF SOME EARLY BELMONT COUNTY
NEWSPAPERS*
By FRANCIS C. HIBBARD
The history of the early newspapers of
Belmont County,
Ohio, is, to some extent, confused and
contradictory. Much that
has been written on the subject is based
apparently upon tradition
and second-hand information. An attempt
will herewith be made
to clear up some of the confusion and
rectify at least some of
the errors.
Two of the present-day papers of the
county--the St. Clairs-
ville Gazette and the Belmont
Chronicle--have been in existence
since the early part of the last
century. As would be expected,
both originated in St. Clairsville, the
oldest town, and, almost
from the beginning, the seat of county
government. The weekly
papers of the early days depended upon
the bounty of legal adver-
tising for much of their income; and as
the county seats were
usually the political centers, they were
the source of much of
the news. Location in the county seat
was, therefore, decidedly
advantageous.
Probably the first journalistic venture
in the county was the
Impartial Expositor, published by Gilkison & Company at St.
Clairsville in 1809. The American
Antiquarian Society has the
initial issue of March 25. No other
issues have been located.
Second in the field came the St.
Clairsville Gazette, first pub-
lished December 14, 1811, by Alexander
Armstrong, with the
title of Belmont Repository. C.
N. Gaumer (one-time editor of
the St. Clairsville Gazette), in
his history of the St. Clairsville
Gazette--written for the Centennial Issue of 1912--states that
the original name was the Belmont
Repository, and accepts 1812
as the founding date. The present-day Gazette
carries the 1812
date in its masthead; this date also
appears on the facade of the
old Gazette building in St. Clairsville.
The Cincinnati Public
* Acknowledgment and thanks are made for
valuable information supplied by
Arthur Mink, acting head of the
Newspaper Department of Ohio State Archaeological
and Historical Society and Dr. Clarence
S. Brigham, director of the American Anti-
quarian Society.
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