Early Newspapers Experience Rapid Growth

In February 1878, the Marion Reporter was founded by J. J. Nall, R. H. Adams and James M. Clement.

It was run under this management until October, 1878, when it was turned over to C. F. Champion and R. C. Walker to see if they could increase advertisement subscriptions the lifeblood of an infant newspaper.

But unable to put the Reporter on a profitable basis by the end of the year, the paper was returned to its owners.  Murrell Adams issued number 1 in January, 1879.

R. C. Walker founded the Crittenden Press May 28, 1879 on a 5 column outside patent as a weekly.  Like the other Marion businesses it experienced an amazingly rapid growth from 1879 to 1894 and it grew to a 7 column outside patent to an 8 column all-home-print paper by 1894.

Press subscriptions grew from 200 to 500 in the first few years to 1400 in 1886 to 1800 in 1894. The Press no doubt prospered on a similar scale under Walker until it was sold to S. M. Jenkins about 1903.

On July 15, 1904, the firm of James E. Chittenden and C. H. Whitehouse founded the Crittenden Record which was greeted with almost instant success by the growing community as is shown by the subscriptions which grew from 1500 soon after it started to over 2,000 by the time of dissolution of the Crittenden-Whitehouse Firm in November, 1905.

The Concrete Building (as it was then known, now the Wheeler's antique building) on East Carlisle Street that was built just east of the mail access alley to the Post Office for the Record's office and presses.   After the 1905 fire, the building went to Whitehouse (who in 1912 sold the building to Henry & Henry Co.); while the newspaper went to Chittenden.

So the homeless Crittenden Record merged with S. M. Jenkins' Crittenden Press and Jenkins edited and published The Crittenden Record-Press through 1917.

An early Crittenden Press ad from a 1897 paper.