A little over a year and a half ago, my family bought a house in Big Sandy. Most folks know it as the Brumwell or the Faber house. Over 100 years ago, it was the Shamrock Hotel. While doing renovation work underneath the house recently, I unearthed all sorts of odds and ends dating back to the earliest days of our community. I've written a couple of articles detailing items I've found and their associated stories. In response to the feedback, I'll be sharing a few more of the items I uncovered.
While cleaning out the underside of the front porch area with Adam Poole, who does fantastic contracting work locally, he found the remains of a newspaper. I cleaned as much dirt from the tattered pages as I could while still under the floor and read a few paragraphs in an article detailing a congressional address delivered by President Theodore Roosevelt. The article described progress in the nation's negotiations to begin the construction of a canal. The article described the various nations that were potential hosts for the project. The story itself caught my eye because I knew enough to date it in the early years of the 20th century. The remnants of the newspaper found its way into the pile of odds and ends that would be saved for further research.
To my wife's chagrin, the scraps of dusty old paper found their way to the dining room table where I laid them out and gently brushed them as clean as I could to try and discern their origin. The newspaper itself was the Youth's Companion, from December 24th, 1903. A little bit of research told a fascinating story of newspaper history.
The Youth's Companion was published from 1827 to 1929, when it was merged with The American Boy. Later renamed, the Companion, the paper described itself as the first newspaper aimed exclusively at children, though later it would evolve into a family periodical. In 1900, the paper was distributed to 500,000 subscribers. Subscribing to the paper was generally done through your regular newspaper subscription. Papers would advertise it as an add-on to their regular subscription. For an extra dollar or two, depending on when you were adding the subscription, your child would receive a copy of the weekly paper when you received your regular issues. In my research, I was able to find ads in early issues of local papers encouraging locals to receive the add-on kids' paper.
The Companion initially centered heavily on religion, primarily because it was meant to encourage virtue and piety in young people. It also warned children away from transgression. The initial religious focus did not become commercially successful, but the paper grew dramatically in the years that followed its refocus on entertainment. Early issues of the Mountaineer reference the periodical's emphasis on sports as a major draw for younger readers. Most issues covered national stories, sports, featured poems and short stories, and other articles. Famous contributors included Booker T. Washington, Emily Dickinson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, and Jack London. Eventually, when the paper evolved into a periodical aimed at the whole family, they added a page of puzzles and activities for children. The paper is famous for publishing the first copy of the Pledge of Allegiance in 1892, which was written by Francis Bellamy, a staff member at the paper.
Today you can find copies of the newspaper for sale online. I was even able to find a PDF copy of the issue from under my house after a lot of hunting online.
