[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 32 (Thursday, February 27, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E307]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


  A SPECIAL TRIBUTE TO THE PERRYSBURG JOURNAL ON THE OCCASION OF ITS 
                             150TH BIRTHDAY

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                          HON. PAUL E. GILLMOR

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 26, 2003

  Mr. GILLMOR. Mr. Speaker, on March 10, 2003, the Perrysburg Messenger 
Journal will celebrate its 150th birthday. The Perrysburg Journal, one 
of the parents of today's Perrysburg Messenger Journal, began 
publication on March 10, 1853. It was not the first newspaper in Wood 
County: Eight weeklies in Perrysburg preceded it. But today it is the 
oldest newspaper in Wood County and the oldest business in Perrysburg.
  The eight-pager made its appearance without fanfare because of 
President Franklin Pierce's Inaugural address. The lengthy railroad 
laws also crowded out the ``salutatory'' editorial Silmon Clark had 
prepared. Mr. Clark heralded his newspaper with an announcement at the 
bottom of page 7. Under the flag, he dedicated it to ``Agriculture, 
Commerce, Manufactures.'' By carrier, the paper cost $1.75 a year; by 
mail, $1.50. He set up shop ``in a room upstairs, north end of the 
Baird House.'' Although the Journal was a new publication, Mr. Clark 
hailed it as the successor to his earlier Fort Meigs Reveille, which he 
renamed The Perrysburg Star because he said ``Reveille'' was not a good 
English word, people couldn't pronounce it, and he was tired of ``the 
cruelty of the attempt.''
  He ceased publication of the Star in 1852 and he sold the printing 
office to A. D. Wright. Professor Wright then started the North-Western 
Democrat. Along with the laws and the political news, the first paper 
carried pieces on far-ranging subjects, such as current conditions in 
Rome, census figures for St. Louis, poetry, and platitudes. As was 
common practice, Mr. Clark borrowed freely from other newspapers, 
stories not limited to sharing police reports from other parts of the 
country. Frontier newspapers in the isolated villages and busy river 
towns were like that in those days. They entertained and they informed. 
They brought the outside world to eager readers. Perrysburg readers 
waited for installments of such serials as ``Indian Story'' and 
``Walmsby House'', or the ``Lover's Revenge, a Story Laid in the South 
of Ireland.''
  The newspaper also advised and chastised. It contained strongly 
partisan opinions, national news gleaned from larger papers received by 
the latest post. It contained literary material or ``notices'' 
(advertisements) for goods like Dr. Rojack's Blood Purifier. One had to 
look for the little bits of local news, which usually had no headlines 
and were scattered in the columns. The early weeklies of the era were 
small, hand-set, and often crude, but they had much to do with the 
crystallization of public opinion that made the West a new factor in 
American politics, according to a history of the mass media, ``The 
Press in America'' by Emery and Emery.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to join me in paying tribute to the 
Perrysburg Messenger Journal on the occasion of its 150th Anniversary. 
For well over a century now the Journal has provided the news fairly 
and accurately to the people of Northwestern Ohio. I am proud to offer 
these sentiments today properly documenting this event in the record of 
the 108th Congress.

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