Owensboro Newspapers

Owensboro Bulletin

The first newspaper in Daviess County was the Owensboro Bulletin, started in 1844 as a Henry Clay "Whig paper, by Thornton C. Pattee, and continued for several years.

Owensboro Gazette

The next was the Owensboro Gazette, a Democratic organ, established about April 10, 1852, by George G. Vest, from Frankfort, Ky, now United States Senator from Missouri, and Robert S. Triplett, of Owensboro, still a well-known business man of this place. Mr. Vest brought with him from Frankfort a good printer named Joseph H. Mayhall, and their paper was therefore a very fine-looking sheet. The first year it had an average of about ninety advertisements in it from the business men of Owensboro, among them Tyler & Mayo, Moorman & Bros, Allen & Daveiss, W. H. Kerney & Co, J. Hyman & Co, Adams & Shmutte, Wing & Weir, Megill & Bro, and Simmons & Millett. The proposed Henderson & Nashville Railroad was much talked of then, and was therefore a prominent topic in its columns. Within a year after its commencement, Mr. Vest sold the paper to Mr. Mayhall, who employed Alfred B. Johnson as editor. This man was a brother of Hon. James L. Johnson, and died in Owensboro before the war. In the fall of 1854, Mr. Mayhall was thrown out of a buggy and killed, and his widow continued the paper for a short time and sold it to a Mr. Hawkins, but it did not survive long.

National American, The Shield, and Ford's Southern Shield

During the Know-Nothing excitement of 1856 the National American was started in Owensboro by Joshua G. Ford, proprietor, and George H. Yeaman, editor. The first number was dated Aug. 6, 1856. A. G. Botts succeeded Mr. Yeaman as editor, and Colonel John H. McHenry was the next, in 1857-58; and about this time, Mr. Ford changed the name to The Shield, and soon after the outbreak of the war to Ford's Southern Shield, which name it sustained until its discontinuance in 1ST5. For a year or so, however, during the war, it was located at Hartford, Ky.

The Owensboro Monitor

This paper was started in 1862 by Henry M. Woodruff, a strong Union man, who spoke outboldly in the face of war. The size of the paper at first was a twenty-inch six-column folio, and the first number is dated Aug. 13, 1862. In the last week of May, 1864, Thomas S, Pettit became a part owner, and changed the political tone of the paper, and spoke out as boldly against Lincoln's administration as his predecessor did against secession, although for the Union. Soon afterward, Mr. Woodruff retired from the paper altogether. In the autumn of this year Mr. Pettit was taken away by military authority, as more fully described a little further on, and the paper was discontinued for about six months, except a few weeks, when it was run by Rev. Richard C. Gardner, a Methodist Chaplain of the Twenty-seventh Kentucky Infantry, who liad for his aid a few soldiers who could set type. During these changes considerable damage was done to the material of the office.

The following May, Mr. Pettit returned from "Dixie Land" and resumed his old position, bought new press and type, and battled away on the same old principles for which he was banished, and increased the circulation to more than 2,000 within a year. In the summer of 1869, he purchased a power press.

The local department of the paper he always kept open to all parties, and the news was given without partisan bias.

A. L. Ashby, from Mt. Sterling, Ky, was admitted as associate editor from May 27, 1868, to Aug. 7, 1872. He was afterward Secretary of the Owensboro & Nashville Railroad Company, and is now living at Louisville. He has accumulated considerable property. On July 21, 1869, the Monitor was enlarged to eight twenty-six inch columns to the page.

In 1874, Mr. Pettit sold the Monitor to Robert Campbell, a native of Texas, who was educated at Baton Rouge, La., and served in Hood's Texas Brigade during the war. He was admitted to the bar in Texas, but in 1871, at the age of twenty-six, he commenced journalism in Mississippi.

The Monitor was suspended about the 1st of March, 1877, and the material of the office sold afterward to J. A. Munday, who started the Messenger the following August.