{"id":4710,"date":"2022-02-04T08:24:57","date_gmt":"2022-02-04T14:24:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/?p=4710"},"modified":"2022-02-04T08:24:57","modified_gmt":"2022-02-04T14:24:57","slug":"a-plucky-editor-in-19th-century-deep-east-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/a-plucky-editor-in-19th-century-deep-east-texas\/","title":{"rendered":"A Plucky Editor in 19th Century Deep East Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Print this entry<\/a><\/p>

As I have mentioned previously, I am working on a book about the San Augustine Red-Lander<\/em> and the interesting characters that ran that paper during the Republic of Texas years and into the first years of Texas joining the union as a state. I hope to bring that fascinating period alive through the thousands of pages of newspapers I have perused and transcribed over the past two years. Whether I succeed or not will be up to the readers, of course.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The prominent editor of the Red-Lander<\/em>, for seven of its nine years in existence, was Alanson Wyllys Canfield, who emigrated to Texas from his native Connecticut in 1835, the year before the Texas revolution, in which he fought. He was 27 at the time and took over publishing what became The Red-Lander <\/em>in 1839 at the age of 31. Part of my fascination with Canfield is that I took over running a weekly newspaper in San Augustine at the age of 26 \u2013 40 years ago this July. That paper was called The Rambler<\/em>. Eventually I became the owner and stayed there for five years. That experience provided the foundation on which I built a career running newspapers for several decades.<\/p>\n

While I was there, I wrote my master\u2019s thesis on The Red-Lander<\/em>, thanks to The University of Texas at Austin giving me an extra year of grace before time expired. The pandemic has provided the perfect opportunity to spend hundreds of hours researching newspapers from that era, plus journal articles and books.<\/p>\n

Canfield was a trenchant writer with a wide vocabulary and a wicked sense of humor. Publishing a weekly newspaper in a tiny town nestled in the woods of Deep East Texas was tough work in the 19th<\/sup> century. Keeping reliable printers and compositors was a constant headache. Paper on which to print the newspaper, usually four pages, had to come from New Orleans or sometimes through Natchitoches, La. Turnover of newspaper editors was high as a result. The fact that Canfield lasted seven years is admirable and rare for the times.<\/p>\n

I plucked out some of his pithier passages to pass along, from 1842-1844. Writers in this time period were inordinately fond of commas, and I have been faithful to the original:<\/p>\n