by Larry Felton Johnson
[This is an updated and expanded version of an article we published last December]
I have a fascination with old newspapers. As a journalist, examining the changes in form and substance of newspapers through the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries papers fascinates me.
So when I visit the Georgia Historic Newspapers website, I’m like a 72-year-old kid in a candy store. The site is a part of the GALILEO project and is housed at the University of Georgia. It’s an amazing resource for anyone with an interest in the history of Georgia and its regions.
The site frequently adds additional newspapers, and its collection currently spans the years 1763 to 2023.
The earliest newspapers are from coastal Georgia since prior to the 1820s, the rest of what became Georgia was part of the Native American nations.
I did a general search for Cobb County newspapers to see what I could find besides the obvious paper, the Marietta Daily Journal (which operated under various versions of that name after its founding shortly after the end of the Civil War).
I found two newspapers that began publication shortly after Cobb County was created out of what had been Indian lands. Cobb was one of the nine counties formed when the much larger Cherokee County was broken up.
The first newspaper in Cobb was the Marietta Advocate, which began publishing in 1843.
Its first issues were printed in 1843, only a month before the second-oldest paper, the Marietta Helicon, began publication.
The Advocate, owned by Nathaniel Calder, was associated with the Democratic Party, whereas the Helicon supported the Whig Party. In the 19th Century, newspapers were often openly and officially aligned with political parties.
According to the Advocate’s page on the Georgia Historic Newspaper site:
It isn’t clear why Calder originally chose to call his paper the Cherokee Advocate,since Marietta was located in the relatively new Cobb County, but…
Read the full article here
