< Previous50 | The Daily News | Celebrating 175 Years A philosophical arc extends from Willard Richardson, who purchased The Daily News shortly after it first appeared on April 11, 1842, through his successor, Alfred Belo, who led the paper into the 20th century, to Carmage Walls, the publishing entrepreneur who bought it in 1967, and whose daughter runs it today.The newspaper in those 175 years has rigorously promoted Galveston and its eponymous county — and those who call the region home.Richardson early on vowed that The Daily News would advocate for those it served, and history has borne out his commitment and, too, that of his successors.He had not long owned the paper when he wrote the first known promotion of the elixir that lay off the island’s shore and, in so doing, began to make Galveston the communal attraction it is today.“Persons immersed in the waters for a reasonable time do not lose the luster of the eye and the ruddiness of the cheek as they do in pure water,” he waxed holistic, “but feel refreshed and invigorated on coming out, and this tonic effect lasts for 48 hours, during which time a pleasant sense of exhilaration is experienced.”Richardson also advocated for the expansion of railroads and the deepening of the Galveston harbor and the luring of the hardy pioneers who built up the state and prospered.ENCOURAGING MIGRATIONRichardson, working with the unrelated David Richardson, an English-born marketing man the publisher had hired to promote both the paper and the region, launched the Texas Almanac, a compendium of the state’s attributes.The almanac first appeared in January 1857 and was distributed widely to promote immigration to the state.“Those who have money to purchase lands can buy the very best already improved or unimproved at prices so low every acre will pay for itself twice over by the crop it produces the first year,” Richardson wrote of the state’s vast, available acreage. “If a man wishes to make stock raising his business, he can have the pasturage of as many thousand acres as he pleases without money and without price.“Those who are not able to or do not desire to purchase lands for cultivation can lease the best farm lands in this or any other county and if he desires it he can almost everywhere get the necessary provisions furnished him the first year on credit at the lowest market prices.”COMMUNITY FIRSTThe Daily News upholds a 175-year-long philosophyBY TOM BASSINGThe Texas Almanac of 1857. TEXAS ALMANAC“I THINK IT’S SAFE TO SAY THE DAILY NEWS WAS INVOLVED IN VIRTUALLY EVERY MAJOR COMMUNITY DECISION MADE OVER THE LAST 175 YEARS. I CAN SAY WITH CONFIDENCE THAT OUR INTENT ALWAYS WAS WHAT WE SAW AS BEST FOR THE PEOPLE OF GALVESTON.”DOLPH TILLOTSONGalveston6025 Heards Ln409-740-1251Friendswood211 W. Edgewood281-442-1892www.gia-tx.comCongratulations to The Galveston County Daily Newson 175 Years!Celebrating 125 years of Reliable Professional Service heritagetexas.comGALVESTON OFFICE 13655 FM 3005 | Galveston, TX 77554• Consistently ranked among the TOP 2 Producers on Galvestion Island for Dollar Volume and number of Closed transactions.• Honored 6 times by the Houston Business Journal for Closed Transactions• Honored by H Texas Magazine• Honored by Heritage Texas Properties as 2013 - 2016 Top Producer - Number 2 TOP Producer 2016• Nationally recognized as a Real Trends Top 250 Real Estate Professional for Closed TransactionsI offer professional real estate services with over 45 years of experience.www.suejohnsongalveston.comsue@heritagetexas.comSue Johnson Broker Associate409.682.9050GALVESTON OFFICE 13655 FM 3005 | Galveston, TX 77554heritagetexas.comSue Johnson Broker Associate409.682.9050Congratulations to The Daily News• Honored by Heritage Texas Properties as 2013 - 2016 Top Producer - Number 2 TOP Producer 2016• Nationally recognized as a Real Trends Top 250 Real Estate Professional for Closed Transactions • Consistently ranked among the TOP 2 Producers on Galvestion Island for Dollar Volume and number of Closed transactions.• Honored 6 times by the Houston Business Journal for Closed Transactions• Honored by H Texas MagazineI offer professional real estate services with over 45 years of experience.www.suejohnsongalveston.com • sue@heritagetexas.com Celebrating 175 Years | The Daily News | 51The pitch proved effective as newcomers flocked to the county and farther west into the state. The Texas population, in the first quarter century after the Texas Almanac first appeared, soared by more than 1 million residents, the nation’s decennial census found in 1880 — from fewer than 600,000 people to more than 1.5 million.The Texas Almanac is still published more than a century and a half later, now by the Texas State Historical Association.THE PUSH FOR RAILWAYSYet, as productive as the land Richardson promoted proved to be, farmers had to have ways to get their crops to market in a cost-effective fashion.Richardson here, too, took the lead, pushing the state to get into the railroad business.By 1856, he had conceived of a state-owned rail system and took his proposal to Austin for legislative approval, which proved not to be forthcoming. Still, his well-argued and equally well-advertised plan spurred private development of railways.Richardson’s editorial push also changed the course of other railroaders’ plans, including those behind the Southern Pacific, who envisioned a continuous sweep of track continuing from the western bank of the Mighty Mississippi to the Pacific shore — albeit running well north of Texas.Richardson set to work on convincing the Southern Pacific’s leaders to redraw their proposed route.“The great value of this road to Texas induces us to notice some of the manifest advantages over all others proposed to be extended to the Pacific coast region,” he wrote. “The more northern routes pass through barren and uninhabited regions, while this passes through regions partially settled and often inviting dense settlement, on account of the extensive prairies or fine pasturage, rich valleys, and valuable minerals.“This road would do an immense business in transporting the products of mines and in carrying the thousands who are constantly going to and returning from those regions. In fact, this road would so expedite the settlement of the vast region to the Pacific that the trade would in a very few years exceed the capacity of the road to carry it.”Twenty-two years later, The Daily News — too late by five years for Richardson, who had died in 1875, to read it — ran 52 | The Daily News | Celebrating 175 Years (LEFT) The Galveston News on Sunday, September 9, 1900, the day after the storm. (RIGHT) The Galveston News from Sept. 10, 1900. ROSENBERG LIBRARY Celebrating 175 Years | The Daily News | 53on its front page an article announced the opening of Southern Pacific service through Texas along the transcontinental system.AN ARDUOUS FIGHTBy 1868, Richardson through his pages began a push for federal support to deepen the Galveston harbor, a sea link to the railroad system that had unified the state and crossed from the mainland onto the island, where crops and cattle and goods of all manner were loaded aboard ships for export.Shipbuilders had begun launching ever-larger ships, with deeper drafts, and shoaling in and around Galveston’s harbor rendered the port less than sufficient.Arriving ships had to drop anchor outside the port and transfer their cargoes to smaller boats, so-called lighters. The same, albeit opposite, process was required for lading outgoing ships.By then, Richardson had taken on as a full partner a former Confederate colonel named Alfred Belo, an intuitive and persistent man who, in the years after the longtime publisher’s death, continued the ultimately successful push for Congress to finance the harbor’s expansion; on Sept. 19, 1890, President Benjamin Harrison signed into law a bill funding the project.Belo — by then the paper’s sole owner — acknowledged his mentor’s efforts and saluted the paper’s and the business community’s accomplishment.“For almost a quarter of a century, The News … has contended for the establishment of a deepwater entrance to Galveston harbor. For almost a quarter of a century it has waged a continuous campaign for this cause without wearying or wavering, without relaxing or relenting,” an editorial noted the following day. “The struggle has been long and severe, but at length The News has the proud satisfaction that its efforts have been crowned with final success.”UPLIFTING THE POPULACEWhile the Gulf of Mexico and Galveston Bay provided immense opportunities for the island city and the surrounding area, so, too, did the water bring disaster, no more so than on Sept. 8, 1900, when a storm that had been born just off the African coast and had steadily made its fateful way across the Atlantic, shredding Caribbean islands, traversed the Gulf and crashed into Galveston.The Bullied to the Brink series is the most recent iteration of a long-standing tradition of The Daily News. DAILY NEWS FILEBy the time it had passed over the island and continued its murderous run across the mainland, no fewer than 6,000 people lay dead in and around Galveston.The battered island had no greater advocate than The Daily News in the days and weeks and months following the brutal storm, still the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history in terms of lives lost.Many surveying the desolation advocated abandoning the island altogether. The paper railed against such naysayers.Galveston would build a seawall to prevent a repeat; it would rebuild its wharves and remain a principal port; it would repair what could be repaired and rebuild the rest, the paper vowed.“Tears and grief must not make us forget our present duties,” an editorial somberly advised. “The blight and ruin which have desolated Galveston are not beyond repair. We must not for a moment think Galveston is to be abandoned because of one disaster, however terrible that disaster has been. …“It is time for courage of the highest order.”In no small part due to such insistence, little more than a year after the storm’s unannounced arrival, The Daily News on Jan. 1, 1902, published a special edition, heralding the city’s “rising from the ruins.”That had been made possible, the paper wrote, because of those who, “first forgetting all else except the caring for the sick and wounded, the destitute and the homeless, and putting away their dead, had then worked in rehabilitating their homes and city and opening up its avenues of industry and commerce.”AN ENDURING PHILOSOPHYOver the ensuing decades, the paper changed ownership three times, first in 1923 and most recently in 1967, when Carmage Walls took over and put in writing — echoing Richardson — his belief that newspapers must, editorially and financially, support those who support them.“My conception of a newspaper is that it is the greatest force for good or evil in a community,” he wrote. “It is a semipublic utility. We who are fortunate to hold stock in a newspaper I consider but temporary custodians of this service vehicle in the community. By our ownership of the stock we also assume tremendous responsibilities, first to the public that we service.”Walls and his wife to that end, among other deeds of generosity, established the Carmage and Martha Ann Walls Distinguished Chair of Tropical Diseases at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.Walls died on Nov. 22, 1998; his wife, better known as Molly, died 10 years later. Today, their daughter Lissa Walls is the sole shareholder of both Southern Newspapers Inc. and Galveston Newspapers Inc., the latter of which operates The Daily News.“The newspaper should be a leader in the community,” current Publisher Leonard Woolsey said. “My role as a publisher is to get out and about. It’s not just Rotary meetings and chamber of commerce meetings, it’s getting out and meeting people and getting to know them, getting a feel for the pulse of the community.”ONGOING EFFORTSIt all amounts to connected arcs in a continuum of supporting the community the paper serves, Woolsey said and offered an ongoing example.“Ever since Ike washed across the island, the paper has gotten behind building some kind of spinal protection, not just for Galveston, not just for Texas City, but for the entire region,” he said. “This isn’t just about property loss, it’s about what’s important for this region’s economy.“We’ve written about it extensively, advocated for it, and, now, George P. Bush, the Texas Land Commissioner, has put it at the top of his agenda.”Most recently, The Daily News editorial staff conceived and executed a multipart series — Bullied to the Brink — that delved into a pressing and all-too-often fatal phenomenon that has only gotten worse with the spread of social media.“The series has generated a lot of conversation, and not just talk around the water cooler, but in the schools,” Woolsey said. “They’ve asked us for multiple copies of those articles to share in their classrooms to generate discussion: ‘Where do we have a problem? Where can we move forward?’”Moreover, he said, “We invest a lot of cash money in this community. It’s our duty, and it’s the right thing to do.”TAKING STANDSDolph Tillotson, who served as publisher of The Daily News for a quarter century beginning in 1987, noted the paper’s support for a litany of projects that have bolstered Galveston, from supporting the port’s ongoing development to backing the birth of the Galveston Island Convention Center and the Galveston Economic Development Partnership.“I think it’s safe to say The Daily News was involved in virtually every major community decision made over the last 175 years,” Tillotson, now a member of Galveston Newspapers’ board of directors, said. “I can say with confidence that our intent always was what we saw as best for the people of Galveston.“If there was a big issue in Galveston, the paper took a stand. Sometimes we were right, sometimes not.“But when all is said and done, The Daily News throughout its history has an incredibly good record of taking positions on the issues that have been instrumental to the betterment of our community.”54 | The Daily News | Celebrating 175 Years “FOR ALMOST A QUARTER OF A CENTURY, THE NEWS … HAS CONTENDED FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A DEEPWATER ENTRANCE TO GALVESTON HARBOR. FOR ALMOST A QUARTER OF A CENTURY IT HAS WAGED A CONTINUOUS CAMPAIGN FOR THIS CAUSE WITHOUT WEARYING OR WAVERING, WITHOUT RELAXING OR RELENTING. THE STRUGGLE HAS BEEN LONG AND SEVERE, BUT AT LENGTH THE NEWS HAS THE PROUD SATISFACTION THAT ITS EFFORTS HAVE BEEN CROWNED WITH FINAL SUCCESS.”EDITORIAL IN THE NEWS ON SEPT. 20, 1890 Celebrating 175 Years | The Daily News | 55Just off the east side of the lobby of The Daily News building sits a cast-iron hand press that company lore holds was used to print the first issue in the paper’s 175-year history.Yet, before its putative use in printing that first issue, on April 11, 1842, the R. Hoe & Co.’s Washington Press No. 2369 — embellished with pewter images of George Washington and printer-turned-polymath Benjamin Franklin embossed on its headpiece — had been associated with nothing but misfortune.The San Luis Advocate, in Brazoria County, is believed to be the first newspaper printed on it, and that paper, which debuted in 1840, failed within a year.The Advocate’s owner and publisher, S.J. Durnet, seeking to salvage something from his investment, sold the press to a man named F. Pinckard, who planned on starting up his own paper in Galveston.With terms reached and the sale completed, Pinckard had the press loaded onto a small boat and set out for the island. For whatever reason, be it foul weather, poor seamanship or ill-placement of the cumbersome machine, the boat capsized, and the Washington Press spent the next several months at the bottom of West Bay before it was eventually raised and brought to Galveston.Pinckard soon had it restored to operating condition and launched his Galveston Texas Times, which, too, debuted and died in rapid succession.Pinckard, accounts have it, then sold the press to Samuel Bangs, the former filibuster who founded The Daily News.Each of The Daily News’ earliest press runs totaled some 300 copies, all laboriously printed first on one side, then laid over and printed on the other, before being folded and handed off to Galveston merchants for sale.A history of advancementTECHNOLOGY AT THE DAILY NEWSMichael Bluitt adds fresh ink to the press at The Daily News before a press run. JENNIFER REYNOLDSBY TOM BASSINGAUTO • HOME • LIFE • COMMERCIALNobody offers more discounts than Farmers.Additional Discounts For:Teachers • Firefighters • Doctors • Engineers • PolicemanMark Spurgeon Insurance Agency, Inc.mspurgeon@farmersagent.comProducts & Service to meet all your insurance needs• Great Rates• EZ Monthly Payments Available• New Home Discount*• Multiple Policy Discount*Texas City 409-945-5148League City 281-332-9200Family Owned and Operated Since 1982 sandnsea.com • 409.797.5500 56 | The Daily News | Celebrating 175 Years We Salute and Congratulate The GalvesTon CounTy Daily news on your175 th Anniversary!is in the Center of it All!Texas City Economic Development CorporationTexas City Recreation and Tourism Department1801 9th Avenue North • Texas City, Texas 77590409-643-5990 or www.texas-city-tx.orgwww.facebook.com/cityoftexascityOn January 1, 1840, First Presbyterian Church was the first church established on Galveston Island. During our 177 year history we’ve survived hurricanes and fire; we’ve witnessed weddings, baptisms, and funerals; we’ve sung, prayed and worshiped together. We’ve rebuilt after tragedy, and in 2017 we dedicated the Knox Chapel and are currently restoring our Tiffany and J&R Lamb windows. We are also home to a historic Hook and Hastings pipe organ. If you are looking for a church home, we invite you to experience our warm and welcoming congregation. Sunday School at 9:30 AM, Coffee & Fellowship at 10:30 AM, Worship at 11 AM First Presbyterian Church, 1903 Church, 409-762-8638 www.galvpres.com 18 CONVENIENT BRANCHESLOW CONSUMER LOAN RATES1ST MORTGAGE/REFINANCEOTHER REAL ESTATE LOANSSAVINGS AND INVESTMENTSSHARE CERTIFICATESFREE FINANCIAL SEMINARSAND MUCH MORE!Your savings federally insured to at least $250,000and backed by the full faith and credit of the United States GovernmentNational Credit Union Administration, a U.S. Government AgencyNCUAWWW.JSCFCU.ORGFINANCIALLYFIT WITH JSC FCUJOIN TODAYLuis A Ferre Number One Realtor for In Town volume* (2016) Galveston Island Realtor of the Year (2015)*(transactions, listings and sales) Source: GARCONGRATULATIONS TO THE DAILY NEWS FOR GIVING GALVESTON A SOUL FOR 175 YEARS. “My theory was that a city without a newspaper is a city without a soul. Celebrating 175 Years | The Daily News | 5758 | The Daily News | Celebrating 175 Years Yet, The Daily News itself seemingly also fell victim to the supposed jinx — idling the Washington Press for a year before the paper resumed printing under the abbreviated name, The News.A MATTER OF KARMA?The Washington Press’s initial associations with ill fate perhaps were payback for the duplicity with which its manufacturer, a New York inventor named Richard March Hoe, had acquired its patent.“Mr. Samuel Rust, in 1829, patented the Washington Hand Press and began their manufacture. The frame was of an improved shape, and the works were more powerful than those of the Smith Press,” a Hoe company apprentice named Stephen Davis Tucker wrote in his autobiographical “History of R. Hoe & Company, 1834-1885.”“Messrs. R. Hoe & Co. wished to buy Mr. Rust’s patent, but he refused to sell to them, so (Hoe employee) Mr. John Colby in 1835, under pretense of starting in business for himself, succeeded in buying Mr. Rust’s patent right, stock, tools, and shop complete, and continued the manufacture of the presses, but in a short time the business was moved to Messrs. R. Hoe & Co.’s works.”In any event, the introduction of R. Hoe & Co.’s newfangled cylinder press in 1855 superseded the old Washington hand press.Hoe’s cylinder press, which allowed for far faster printing and which The News quickly acquired, ran under the power of one horse treading a mill for the duration of the press run.Yet, it, too, soon was yesterday’s news.RAPID ADVANCEMENTSAlfred Belo, a former Confederate colonel, joined the paper in 1865 at war’s end and, showing a keen mind for business, soon became a partner in The News. Two years later, with the paper’s circulation growing, he convinced the senior partner, Willard Richardson, to invest in a far-faster, steam-operated Taylor single-cylinder press.Yet, it, too, quickly fell victim to technology’s inexorable march and the paper’s continued growth.“For some seven years the paper had been worked upon what is known as the Taylor single-cylinder press, having a capacity of some 1,800 papers an hour, and a machine of most excellent quality,” The News reported on April 5, 1874, in announcing its replacement.“The late extraordinary success of The News, however, in the additions made to its subscription lists and its steadily growing popularity, has compelled its proprietors to increase their press facilities. … The new press is a Hoe machine, double-cylinder with a capacity of 3,500 copies of The News an hour. … In the same room is a Forsyth folding machine, the only one in Texas. … It will fold 2,800 copies an hour.”A REVOLUTIONARY PRESSHoe, not long after inventing the double-cylinder press, struck it rich with his most important invention, the so-called web-perfecting press, which allowed pressmen to print on both sides of a roll of paper at once. The revolutionary press was capable of printing 12,000 copies an hour.An article in The News gushed over the new press, which Belo and Richardson purchased in 1874.“At first glance it looks a little like an old-fashioned separator to a threshing machine,” the paper reported. “Make the frame of iron, multiply the cylinders by ten, make every part as neat and perfect as the running gears of an Elgin watch, feed it at one end from an endless roll, and let it deliver at the other end on two tables ready for the carrier.“Think of the press taking in at one end of a roll of delicate paper five miles long and whirling it through a curious system of wheels and knives and tapes and switches that twitch it back and forth so rapidly that the eye is unable to distinguish the individual papers till they are printed and cut, and you have some idea of the work.”Hoe’s latest press was capable of printing 18,000 copies an hour.ADVANCES IN TYPESETTINGThe News around 1886 augmented its latest acquired press with the purchase of a so-called Linotype machine, perfected that year by the German-born American inventor Ottmar Mergenthaler, making obsolete the Young & Delcambre single-line typesetting machine The News had been using since 1873.The Mergenthaler allowed keystroke operators to set multiple lines of type. As fast as they could type reports handed to them, the device dropped pieces of lead type into their correct positions, forming words and sentences with precise line breaks, greatly speeding the process of setting up the daily press run.An old Linotype machine is displayed near the newsroom at The Galveston County Daily News. JENNIFER REYNOLDS Celebrating 175 Years | The Daily News | 59That technology was still in vogue at the time the paper acquired a Goss letterpress, which also relied on hot-metal type set into rollers. The durable machine in 1965 survived the trip from the paper’s building at 2108 Mechanic St. to its current home at 8522 Teichman Road, which opened that year.Neither the Goss nor Mergenthaler’s Linotype, though, would survive the introduction of evermore efficient technology.Newspaper entrepreneur Carmage Walls, who bought The Daily News in 1967, immediately replaced the Goss hot-metal letterpress with a Goss Community offset press, allowing papers to be printed from plates onto which camera-ready negative page images were burned through a process involving chemicals and bursts of blindingly bright light.The changes continued as The Daily News circulation continued to grow.“Eventually, we bought a used Harris 845 from the Beaumont Enterprise that had eight units, which we split into five and three with the folder in the middle,” said Bill Cochrane Sr., the paper’s longtime production manager, who had joined The Daily News as a machinist apprentice in 1964 when the paper was still downtown. “That was a huge improvement.”BETTER COMMUNICATIONSYet, typesetting devices and evermore efficient presses weren’t The Daily News’ only forays into emerging technologies.The paper in its first several decades made great use of the telegraph, turning operators throughout the state into correspondents. Moreover, the first reputed use of the telegraph to transmit a news story while it was occurring came during the Jan. 1, 1863, Battle of Galveston after The News had temporarily moved to Houston in compliance with a wartime order for civilians to evacuate the island.One hardy journalist, Ferdinand Flake, however, defied the edict and remained in Galveston, from which he sent by wire reports as the Confederate victory over the Union’s naval blockade unfolded.The telegraph, naturally enough, would soon face its own demise.Belo, to the wonderment of his neighbors, in March 1878 had poles erected and wires strung between his house and The News building, then at 2217 Market St., and installed the first telephone in Texas. He had admired, at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition two years prior, the first demonstration of Alexander Graham Bell’s marvelous telephony machine, and acquired one once the talking machine was commercially available.When the first telephone exchange in Texas was established the following year, The News was assigned 1 as its phone number.FROM HOT TO COLD TYPEDespite the paper’s embrace of new presses over the years, a direct line still can be traced from the original Hoe Washington hand press to today’s multiunit Harris press: It remains as true today as it was on April 11, 1842, that printing is a matter of employing ink to transfer type to paper, nothing more.The more radical change has come in the production process before the press run, a stunningly rapid transition that has come to redefine how papers are printed.The Daily News was an early adopter of pre-press technologies that replaced Linotype machines, which were dependent on molten lead — so-called hot type — with high-speed phototypesetters, whose output came to be known as cold type.Then along came front-end systems.“The best day of my life, hands down, was when they introduced the front-end system,” Cochrane said. “It changed everything. Our first was from a company called One System, and the next was from Triple-I.”The Daily News’ press runs. JENNIFER REYNOLDSNext >