178 Chronicles of the Cape Fear River

January 8, 1836, the name People’s Press was dropped and
the paper appeared as number one, volume one, of the Wzl-
mington Advertiser. The Press and the Press and Advertiser
had been known as ultra-Jacksonian papers. The Advertiser
as successor had become exceedingly moderate, if not independ-
ent in its tone, and on the 27th of May Mr. Loring retired.

Here is a gap in our history; Mr. Loring sold out and presum-
ably the Advertiser was continued. Trace of it is found in

1839 and 1840, and the valedictory of Mr. Frederick C. Hill,
under whose editorial management it was published during
these last years, appeared in the issue of May 27, 1841. The
paper ceased to exist from that date. Mr. Hill was highly edu-
cated, a gentleman of refined manners and scholarly tastes and
reputed to have wielded the pen in a telling way. It is to be
regretted that the files of the Advertiser are lost; not even a
single number of the paper is within reach. This paper was
intensely, not necessarily violently, Whig in politics.

The Wilmington Chronicle was established by Asa A. Brown
March 12, 1839. Mr. Brown had for many years been a mer-
chant in Wilmington and presumably was a novice in journal-
ism, but from the first the Chronicle was ably edited, and dur-
ing the dozen or more years of its existence it did yeoman ser-
vice in advocating and defending the principles of the Whig
party. Of the Wilmington Messenger, edited by Dr. William
J. Price in advocacy of Democratic principles, nothing accurate
can be learned. That it was published in May, 1843, is known,
and reference to it in the Chronicle of April 3, 1844, shows that
it was in existence at that time. In the same way it is known
that the Wilmington Journal, its successor, was published in
November of the same year. The Messenger, material and good
will, it is understood, between the dates last named and probably
after the presidential election of 1840, passed into the hands of
Messrs. David Fulton and Alfred L. Price. These gentlemen
published the Journal until the death of the former, when his
brother, James Fulton, took editorial charge. The Journal
(weekly) has continued to this day, and is now owned and
edited by Joshua T. James, Esq. The Daily Journal under
Messrs. Fulton and Price did not appear until sometime in the
early fifties and does not come within our scope. Of Dr. Price’s
management and success we can not speak knowingly, but doubt
not the paper was altogether satisfactory to the Democratic
party, whose principles it championed. The Fultons were ex-

Early Years 179

ceptionally able in their profession, Irishmen, native born, if we
mistake not, and their paper wielded great influence throughout
the Cape Fear section and beyond. ,

Mr. Loring, formerly editor of the Advertiser, published the
Independent in Raleigh for a while from early in July, 1848;
but in February, 1846, he returned to Wilmington and with
Mr. William Stringer published the Tri-Weekly Commercial
Review. They claimed that their paper was Whig in politics,
but independently so. It was published well into the fifties,
whither we do not follow it.

Other papers may have been published, but if such is the case
no information concerning them is now available. Perhaps
these articles may bring to light something essential to a com-
plete history of these matters. It will be gladly welcomed.
Whether or not the Wilmington Christian Herald, to be pub-
lished by Samuel Chandler, ever materialized does not appear.

The prospectus was published in 1839.
It is usual to decry the avidity with which the papers of the

nineties gather up the most trivial matters of local happening,
but one who gleans from the papers of “auld lang syne” can not
but wish they had possessed the disposition complained of.
Very many matters that would go far to throw light upon the
people or the times of those days apparently were too well
known to need be chronicled, and so many an important link to
history is wanting. The local editor and the ubiquitous re-
porter were not known in those days.

And now let us get more definitely and distinctly into the
forties, leaving any digressions to come in incidentally. Time,
Wednesday, January 1, 1840. Place, intersection of Front and
Market Streets. Occasion, annual hiring of negroes. Various
colors were there, black perhaps predominating. It was a time
of times, a busy time, for in a few hours all the domestic ar-
rangements depending on servitude were to be unsettled and for
twelve months rearranged. Many a housewife had been looking
to the first of the year in the hope of a change that would give
her more of ease and less perhaps of labor than she had enjoyed
or suffered during the year just past, and many a servant had
been bearing with more or less of patience, longingly looking to
a change of master or of mistress. Some were to be bettered,
some to be worsted, but the star of hope was over all, and though
there would be rain—was there ever a first without rain ’—and
though it had passed into a proverb that the heavens wept on