The following is a re-print of a past column by former Advertiser columnist Stephen Thorning, who passed away on Feb. 23, 2015.
Some text has been updated to reflect changes since the original publication and any images used may not be the same as those that accompanied the original publication.
(This column is the first of a three-part series on county newspapers).
A while I back I was chatting with the publisher of this paper about the history of the newspaper business in Wellington County.
We immediately recognized that this would make a good subject for this column. In putting together these columns, I invariably make use of the back issues of the newspapers around the county. Unfortunately, only a portion of them have survived.
Over the past 157 years there have probably been at least 50 newspapers published in Wellington.
Some have been around almost since the beginning. The Guelph Mercury and the Fergus Freeholder, antecedent of the News Express, both date back 162 years, to 1854.
Others had long careers, but later ceased publication or merged with a one-time rival.
Then there are the also-rans: papers that lasted only a short time, then folded. In most cases there are no known surviving copies. We know of their existence only through references in other papers or listings in business directories.
The early settlers, of course, read papers whenever they could get their hands on them. Toronto and Hamilton papers in the 1830s occasionally carried news of activities in Wellington County. One of the more popular papers here was the Gore Gazette, which focused on Hamilton.
The first newspaper printed in Wellington appeared in 1842. Bearing the unwieldy title of The Guelph Herald and Wellington District Advertiser, it lasted only nine months.
The equipment used to print the Herald, a venerable old Ramage press, had a fascinating history. Charles McDonnel had dragged it from the United States in about 1835, and used it to print the first paper (in German) at Berlin, now Kitchener.
McDonnel brought the equipment to Guelph in 1842. The newly appointed registrar of the Wellington District, H.W. Paterson Sr., bought it and started issuing the crudely produced Herald. Paterson did not have time to find much news, and there was so little advertising that he could not afford to hire others.
Paterson had expected that the paper would do well, with Guelph designated as the seat of the district government. Realizing that he had misjudged the situation, Paterson threw in the towel in 1843.
The old Ramage press was still in town, and it soon had a new owner. A man named Willett used it to print a new paper, The Wellingtonian, a couple of months after the Herald folded. Willett’s paper lasted only six months.
A fresh attempt at local journalism occurred in 1845, when John Smith established the Guelph Advertiser. The first mayor of the Town of Guelph, Smith would combine journalism with politics and a career as a real estate agent and auctioneer.
A tall, thin man, he in later years affected an Abe Lincoln image, with beard and stovepipe hat. He found the hat convenient as a file for bills, notes, advertising copy, and news tips, all of which he stuffed into the inside hatband.
In 1845, though, Smith was a young and aggressive journalist. The corporate history of the Guelph Advertiser is complicated, but Smith kept a finger in the newspaper pie for 30 years.
Smith had just placed the Advertiser on its feet when a rival appeared. F.D. Austen launched the Guelph Herald (the second use of that name at Guelph) in 1847. He picked up that old Ramage press to print the first copies.
The following year he organized a joint stock company to own the paper. Shareholders included H.W. Paterson, proprietor of the first Herald, James Webster, the co-founder of Fergus, and George Pirie, a Scotsman from the Bon Accord settlement near Elora who had grown weary of farming.
Pirie became the Herald’s editor.
Many of the newspapers in the 19th century had a political connection. They were published, and often bankrolled, by faithful members of one political faction or another.
This was the case with the group that took over the Guelph Herald in 1848. All were active conservatives, and Webster had pursued an intermittent career as a politician. The third paper in Wellington, the Elora Backwoodsman, had strong political connections as well, but with the radical or Clear Grit reformers.
The Clear Grits championed causes like universal voting rights, the sanctity of private property, non-denominational schools, and the secret ballot. It is tame stuff today, but when the Backwoodsman appeared in 1852 these were radical notions.
Charles Clarke, who would later serve as reeve of Elora and MPP for Centre Wellington, masterminded the paper. He gathered a group of sympathetic citizens and businessmen to finance the Backwoodsman. The same group also constituted the liberal party riding association.
The Backwoodsman quickly gained a large circulation in the new townships in the north of Wellington. The paper claimed to speak for the settler and the independent farmer, but its opponents soon branded it the tool of Clarke and his Elora clique.
The Backwoodsman faced continual internal problems from its first year. The hired editors frequently disagreed with the owners, and the owners themselves squabbled over editorial policy. The end came in 1859 when one of the partners, disgruntled over an editorial, seized the equipment. He had advanced the money for it and had never been paid.
Elora lacked a paper for only a short time. Later in 1859 John Smith, founder of the Guelph Advertiser, established the Elora Observer. He printed the first issues at the Advertiser office in Guelph. Though a liberal, Smith pursued a more moderate editorial policy than the defunct Backwoodsman.
In the meantime, two other papers had started. George Keeling issued the first copies of the Guelph Mercury in 1854, after leaving his employment with the Guelph Advertiser.
Though it was the third weekly in a town that had only a couple of thousand people, Keeling was able put the Mercury on a solid footing. He held control until his death in 1861. The paper was then taken over by George Palmer, a son of Archdeacon Palmer of Guelph.
Spurred, perhaps by Keeling’s plans, George Pirie left his duties at the Guelph Herald to start a paper at Fergus. The Fergus Freeholder was aimed at the farm population to the east, north and west of Fergus.
The evidence suggests that the Freeholder was printed at the Herald office in Guelph, but the proof is not conclusive. In any case, it seems that the Freeholder’s intended role was to counter the Clear Grit opinions of the Elora Backwoodsman in the northern part of the county.
A few months after the Fergus Freeholder appeared, Thomas Greenham established a second paper at Fergus, the British Constitution. Pirie soon found the competition too much to cope with. He sold the Freeholder to his rival and returned to Guelph, where he bought out his partners in the Guelph Herald.
Renaming the paper the British Constitution and Fergus Freeholder, Greenham soon sold out to the Watt brothers. They found the name to be too much of a mouthful, and selected the Fergus News Record as a substitute. So it remained until the paper’s 1972 amalgamation with the Elora Express to form the Fergus-Elora News Express.
Through the early 1860s Guelph continued to boast of three newspapers. All were weeklies, but the Mercury eventually established a twice-weekly schedule. In 1867 the Guelph Mercury went daily. The Guelph Herald followed in 1872 with a daily edition.
Both were true evening papers, not appearing until after 6pm. Carrier boys would line up outside the office and rush the freshly printed copies to subscribers for after-supper reading.
After going daily, both the Mercury and Herald retained weekly editions. These contained a summary of news from the week as printed in the daily edition, plus news from a string of rural correspondents, sometimes upwards of 30 of them in an issue.
By 1870 the Guelph Advertiser was slipping badly. The Mercury purchased it in 1873, making Guelph a two-paper town for the next half century.
The Guelph Herald remained reasonably loyal to the conservative party as long as it existed. George Pirie, the longtime editor and publisher, died in 1870. Control eventually passed to a new joint stock company, which included F.J. Chadwick, Acton Burrows and A.W. Wright, later well known as a Mount Forest editor and local historian.
This group, with some changes, retained control until 1885, when Harold Gummer bought the paper. A career newspaperman, Gummer had worked in Toronto and the United States before coming to Guelph as the Herald’s plant manager in 1881.
He built up a commercial job printing business that eventually far outstripped the newspaper in profitability. The Herald eventually moved to the building on Douglas Street in Guelph that still bears Gummer’s name.
In 1924, ready for retirement and with his son Bert in ill health, Gummer decided that the Herald was consuming too much attention, and was slipping financially due to increasing costs after the First World War. The Gummer family sold the Herald to their old rival, the Guelph Mercury, on the last day of 1924.
A good humoured, jovial man, Harold Gummer never seemed to mind that his paper perpetually ran behind the Mercury in circulation and advertising. The Mercury had pioneered in new technology, buying an early typesetting machine in 1893, and at great cost, equipping the composing room with linotypes in 1906.
Piloted by tight-lipped men such as James Innes and J.I. McIntosh, the Mercury remained a loyal liberal paper until the demise of the Herald, when it announced that it would pursue an editorial policy of political neutrality.
(Next week: The golden age of weekly papers in Wellington.)
*This column was originally published in the Wellington Advertiser on Oct. 8, 1999.