Winchester’s First Newspaper:

Winchester Advertiser and Its Successors

Winchester’s first newspaper—Winchester Advertiser—began publication in 1814 with William W. Martin and Nathaniel Patten Jr. jointly serving as the publishers and editors.

William W. Martin (1781-1850) was born in Bedford County, Pennsylvania and, according to his biography, in the spring of 1794 his parents sought a home “in the wilds of Kentucky.” They settled in Paris, where Martin joined the Presbyterian Church. He married Susan Depew of Paris in 1810 and studied for the ministry there under Rev. Samuel Rannels. In 1813 he moved to Winchester, was ordained that fall then assumed the pastorate of Sugar Ridge Presbyterian Church. To augment his salary he formed a business partnership with Nathaniel Patten.

Nathaniel Patten Jr. (1793-1837), was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, where his family had been prominent for several generations. In 1808 the family moved west and settled in Mt. Sterling. Patten cast his lot with Martin in Winchester to begin the town’s first newspaper.

Several documents preserved at the Wisconsin Historical Society attest to the paper’s beginning.

(1) In June 1814 George Gibson Taylor of Winchester wrote to Lexington businessman and fellow Presbyterian, James Maccoun, soliciting his influence to procure subscribers to the new paper and adding, “I woud not be wrong in saying that Mr. Martin will be the Most able Editor in the State.”

(2) Taylor enclosed a broadside announcing “To the Public, William W. Martin & Co. propose publishing a weekly newspaper in the town of Winchester, Clarke County, Kentucky, as soon as a sufficient number of subscribers shall be obtained to justify such a measure. The paper is to be entitled The Winchester Advertiser, and its character to be decidedly republican. It shall contain intelligence cujusque veri, foreign and domestic, poetry, &c printed on a super-royal sheet and a new and elegant type. All possible means shall be used to please and inform the public.”

The first issue of the Winchester Advertiser came out on Friday, August 5, 1814. The annual cost of the paper was $2.50 if paid at the end of three months, $3 if paid at the end of the year. (This pay-later policy was a constant sorrow for the firm.) Advertisements cost fifty cents per “square” (presumably, the height and width of one column) the first time and twenty-five cents thereafter. Letters to the editor were required to be post-paid.

The newspaper consisted of four pages that were five columns wide and 13 x 21 inches in size. The content was almost entirely national and international news. Events of statewide interest received some attention (e.g., Kentucky’s role in the War of 1812 was reported on extensively), but local events were rarely mentioned. Reading these papers today, ones finds the advertisements and legal notices provide most of the local content— more on this later.

In the first issue the editors included a notice for apprentices: “Wanted immediately, at the Office of the Winchester Advertiser, two or three Boys, who can come well recommended, as apprentices to the printing business.” They also hired a young printer from Virginia, Thomas T. Dillard. In addition to his printing duties, Dillard was responsible for delivering the paper to city and county residents, a duty he carried out on horseback.

The firm sought other printing business in the community and announced in the paper: “Handbills, Cards, and all kinds of job printing done at the shortest notice and on the most reasonable terms.”

The Advertiser received its national and foreign news from Eastern newspapers and had to await their delivery to Winchester. That news, by the time it was printed, might seem quite stale to us, but back then it was relished as “the latest.” Additional delays were frequent. The editors complained on August 26, “We have not received any papers containing official accounts [of the war] this week. Our readers will attribute the barrenness of this week’s paper to negligence, if not perfidy, of those engaged in forwarding the Marietta mail.”

In the same issue they announced, “The office of the Winchester Advertiser is removed to the brick building nearly opposite the Post Office.” This was followed by an ad: “For rent, small building lately occupied by the Winchester Advertiser.”

After Reverend Martin left to devote more time to his ministry, the original publishing firm was succeeded by Patten and Finnell in July 1815. Martin moved to Indiana in 1818 in order to escape from “the shadow of slavery.” He pastored a number of churches there on his way to becoming one of the most noted “pioneer ministers” in the northwest. Martin established a famous school near his home, long known as “the Log College.” Three of his sons became ministers and five of his daughters married ministers.

Nimrod L. Finnell (1799-1850) came to Winchester from Orange County, Virginia, where he had learned the printer’s art. Patten and Finnell changed the name of the paper to the Kentucky Advertiser and put out their first issue in July 1815. Finnell married Elizabeth Rielly that August.

Finnell left the paper in August 1816, and Patten carried on alone until July 1817, when he discontinued the paper and removed to Missouri. There Patten settled in a region known as the “Boon’s Lick Country” where he published the first newspaper west of St. Louis or north of the Missouri River, the Missouri Intelligencer established in 1819, which he published for 17 years. After suffering many years of bad health, Patten died at age 44.

In 1817 Finnell returned to Winchester and revived the Advertiser that September. He published the paper alone until July 1819, when James Armstrong purchased the paper. That October Armstrong changed the name to Kentucky Advertiser and Farmer’s Magazine.

It is uncertain how long Armstrong’s newspaper continued. A few years later he was living in Augusta, Kentucky, where he published the Western Watchman, a Methodist newspaper edited by Hubbard H. Kavanaugh.

It appears that the Kentucky Advertiser and Farmer’s Magazine was succeeded by the Republican Sentinel published by Finnell in Winchester in 1821. However, no issues of that paper have yet been found. There is some evidence that the Republican Sentinel was succeeded by the Winchester Republican in 1830.

Finnell would continue his publishing career in Lexington in 1832, when he joined Edwin Bryant to purchase the Lexington Reporter. Finnell also published that city’s first daily paper, the Lexington Intelligencer. He later moved to Covington, where he published the Covington Licking Valley Register and where he died in 1850.

Original copies of the Advertiser and its successors are collected and archived at the University of Chicago, Wisconsin Historical Society, Library of Congress and American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Sources

Clarence S. Brigham, Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820, Part 2 (Worchester, MA, 1914), pp. 401-403; A. C. Quisenberry, “Brief Historical Sketch of the Newspapers of Winchester,” 1894, copy at M. I. King Library, University of Kentucky; “Old Winchester newspapers,” Mt. Sterling Advocate, April 29, 1908; Richard H. Collins, History of Kentucky, Vol. 2 (Covington, KY, 1874), pp. 180, 437-438; F. F. Stephens, “Nathaniel Patten, Pioneer Editor,” Missouri Historical Review (1915) 9:139-155; Winchester Advertiser broadside: “Documents from the Shane Collection,” Journal of the Department of History of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (1931) 14:282-283; Robert S. Sanders, Presbyterianism in Paris and Bourbon County, Kentucky, 1786-1961 (Louisville, KY, 1961), p. 42; Hanford A. Edson, Contributions to the Early History of the Presbyterian Church in Indiana (Cincinnati, OH, 1898), p. 102-107; A. Goff Bedford, Land of Our Fathers, History of Clark County, Kentucky (Winchester, KY, 1958), p. 404; J. M. Armstrong & Co., Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky of the Dead and Living (Cincinnati, OH, 1878), p. 170; “Kentucky Advertiser, 1815-1819,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society (1914) 24:402.

 Additional articles about the contents of the newspapers

THE American Antiquarian Society

NEW SERIES, VOL. 24

APRIL 8, 1914— OCTOBER 21, 1914
 View Article

See actual copies of the newspapers

Other pages in this series

[The Advertiser] [AAS Article] [AC Quisenberry Article] [Newspapers abstracted by Harry Enoch]