Ghost Stories: Stand by for news
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s been said that a newspaper is lumber made malleable. It is ink made into words and pictures. It is conceived, born, grows up and dies of old age in a day.
Well, that’s not entirely true. As my lovely wife, Helen, can attest, newspapers can live for decades – in our garage.
In the 1800s, the Barrere family got into the newspaper business.
George Washington Barrere, one of the pioneer settlers of Highland County, had several close calls in battles in the 1700s and early 1800s. His son, John Mills Barrere, at the age of 62, lost an arm in the Battle of Harpers Ferry. Three of John’s sons, Thomas Jefferson Barrere, William Barrere and Bebee Barrere, all died as a result of the Civil War.
Another son, George Washington Barrere, served as a lieutenant colonel in war with the 169th Ohio Volunteer Infantry and earlier served with Company A of the 60th OVI.
Three-plus decades earlier, George Washington Barrere was born on a farm near New Market on Nov. 19, 1831 – just a few years before his famous grandfather by the same name passed away. He received his education in the common schools and finished at the Hillsboro Academy under the instruction of Professor Isaac Sams. As a young man, George Washington Barrere came to Hillsboro to live, clerking for a time in the store of James W. Patterson, and later was employed at a bank of which his uncle, Benjamin Barrere, was the president.
According to the Library of Congress, Colonel George Washington Barrere was also a local dentist, grocer and deputy postmaster.
Like his father and grandfather, George Washington Barrere was a man of many hats, and in the 1880s, he got into the publishing business as he purchased the Highland Weekly News and the Saturday Herald and merged them into one newspaper. The office was located in the Hoggard Building on West Main Street.
On April 7, 1886, the first edition of The News-Herald was published.
During that first year, the paper was published on Wednesdays, and switched to Thursdays in November of 1886.
In the masthead, George Washington Barrere, his son Bebee Barrere, and E.R. Pierson were listed, and a year subscription was $1.50 a year in advance.
In that first edition, under the masthead on Page 6, was an editorial, most likely written by the proprietor, George Washington Barrere.
It read: It was announced when the consolidation of the News and Herald was effected that the name of the paper would be changed at some time in the future, and the proprietors consider this an appropriate time to change it.
With this issue, the Highland News goes into its 50th year, as a steadfast Republican journal. The last number was 53 of Volume 49, the extra number being added to keep the beginning of the year in the month of April, where it was fifty years ago.
Retaining the old heading of the News has occasioned a good deal of misunderstanding on the part of advertisers and subscribers, and the subscription list is combined from the names on both sets of books. To advertisers a large list of subscribers, with a reasonable rate for space, offers a special inducement. The patrons at our job office will take notice that we possess the entire equipments of both offices, and employ one of the best job printers in southern Ohio, and yet are prepared to do work as cheaply as any office that does honest work on a reasonable basis of prices.
We have been studying the wants of our readers in general, and our efforts have been rewarded by a very perceptible increase in our subscription list.
In the future we shall continue to labor for the benefit of our patrons, that the paper may still be conducted in their interest as well as our own. We shall endeavor to have our news pages characterized by thoroughness, our political columns by vigor and justice, and the entire journal by careful preparation and sound business principles.
The editorial was signed George W. Barrere, Bebee Barrere and E.R. Pierson, News-Herald Company.
Directly under the editorial, there was the following brief: “While the Gazette is renovating its office, it would be well to abolish the editorial department of the paper, as that has been among the causes of estrangement between the Democracy of Highland and our fickle contemporary.”
The more things change…
Let’s pause for now and we’ll continue next week.
Steve Roush is a vice president of an international media company and a columnist and contributing writer for The Highland County Press. He can be reached by email at roush_steve@msn.com.