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Weekly newspapers under different names have been published in Bellville without a break for 133 years, ever since the March 1, 1872, debut of the Belleville Dollar Weekly.

But it wasn't the first.

That honor goes to a newspaper with the odd name of Rainbow and Repository, which, according to A.A. Graham's  1880 history  of Richland County, was started in Fredericktown in 1849 and then moved to Bellville.

The history said, "It was a five column folio, and was published by A. Laubach, at $1 per year. It existed only a few months."

An 1861 Knox County history described it like this: 

" Several short lived newspapers have made their appearance in the county within the past eight years, which, by being named, may be kept fresh in the memories of some of the people. They were the Rainbow, which was of the nature of the 'Nashville, Bowling Green, Louisville Courier' of these war times (Mexican War) -- migratory in disposition, and altogether fleeting.

" It was opened out at Mount Vernon by Rev. A. Laubach, sojourned awhile at Fredericktown where the reverend editor was sold by a vile acrostic; then tarried a brief space at Bellville, and the last heard of was among the Senecas, at the city of Tiffin!"

Chasing this paper westward, we find in a Seneca County history that an Abraham Laubach bought The Whig Standard in Tiffin in 1848  and then sold it "one year later."

No copies of that early, transitory Bellville newspaper are known to survive -- not even in the extensive collections of the Ohio Historical Society. The only present knowledge of what it contained comes from other newspapers.

The editor of the brand-new Belleville Dollar Weekly had a Sept. 14, 1849, copy of its predecessor in hand in 1872 and extracted some information about the town of 23 years earlier:

"It contains an editorial, part of which would not be inappropriate to Belleville at the present time. Here it is:

" 'When called upon the grade and pave the sidewalks of our streets, nearly every man entered into the enterprise with a view of effecting that object, and many have already completed their part of the work forward..

"  'And again, when called upon the subscribe for the railroad improvement, the citizens of the town recently took more stock (if we are rightly informed) than was taken along the balance of the line between Mansfield and Mount Vernon.'

"The foreign news column contains an account of the failure of the Hungarian revolution and the flight of Kossath and his compatriots into Turkish territory.

"The advertising columns contain the names of the following gentlemen, who are still citizens of Belleville, vix., Drs. A.I. Beach, N.D. Whitcomb, B. Ridenour, Messrs. John Morrow, Jacob Phillips and Hiram Bailey.

"It contains an advertisement of a Book and Stationery Store in which 'quills and wafers' are conspicuous, which reminds us that steel pens and envelopes had not then come into use.

"It contains a 'Short Patent Sermon' by Dow Jr. Poor 'Dow Jr.' (Eldridge T. Page) - although he wrote many a good 'patent sermon,' he failed to practice what he taught and died of delirium tremens in California a few years afterward."

The Belleville Weekly Dollar editor must have had only that one issue in hand since he wrote, "Should there be any more numbers of the Rainbow and Repository extant, they would be a very acceptable offering at this office."

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Wednesday, March 07, 2012