Dateline: October 5, 2006

Historic Clarendon newspapers discovered

By Roger Estlack, Clarendon Enterprise

The search is over.

Clarendon’s first newspaper has found its way home and is revealing new details of the town’s pioneers to local historians.

The long lost issue and 88 other early Clarendon papers recently turned up with a Pennsylvania dealer of rare books and newspapers after being missing for several decades.

Brent Snyder of Crinkley Bottom Books in Gap, Penn., said he had obtained the papers from an antiques dealer who had in turn purchased them from an auction house. Synder contacted The Clarendon Enterprise through its Web site last Tuesday to see if the local paper would be interested in purchasing the collection.

“We were just blown away by that e-mail,” said publisher Roger Estlack. “Finding the first issue was like a dream come true.”

The Enterprise, which celebrated its 125th anniversary as the Panhandle’s first newspaper in 2003, had put up a reward for the first issue at the time, but it had gone unclaimed. The second issue was later found in the holdings of the Square House Museum in Panhandle and was donated to the Saints’ Roost Museum in 2005.

Estlack and Snyder quickly agreed on terms for the papers, and the issues arrived back home last Friday.

The centerpiece of the collection is Volume One, Number One, of The Clarendon News dated Saturday, June 1, 1878. The paper, which eventually evolved into The Clarendon Enterprise, was edited by Rev. L.H. Carhart with the assistance of James H. Parks.

The collection is still being examined, but it appears the entire first and second volumes are complete. The News began as a monthly publication, and those 24 issues chronicle the first two years of Carhart’s Christian colony, often referred to as “Saints’ Roost.”

“We now know the exact date that settlers first arrived in Clarendon – March 15, 1878,” Estlack said.

Using copy provided from the colony, Volumes One and Two were printed by Carhart’s relatives in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, before Ed Carhart brought the first printing press to the Panhandle in 1880 and took over the paper.

Arrangements will be made in the near future to have the collection microfilmed by Texas Tech University.

Donley County Historical Commission Chair Jean Stavenhagen is among the few people who have viewed the papers since their arrival last week.

“We are so fortunate to have been able to acquire these original editions of the local newspaper after so many years,” Stavenhagen said. “They are simply priceless to all historians and especially to researchers of Donley County history. I can hardly wait until they are filmed and available for use.”

The collection includes several scattered issues from 1880 through 1884 and then skips to one issue dated February 2, 1888.

“That issue is important because it was published just a few months after the move was made to New Clarendon on the railroad,” Estlack said. “It included an ‘Immigration Supplement,’ which was used to entice settlers to the area with a map of New Clarendon, a listing of businesses operating at that time, a discussion of the history of the county and of the paper, and a description of neighboring counties.”

How these historic newspapers ended up in Pennsylvania is still a mystery, and contact could not be made with the auction house that sold them before press time. Currently, there are two leading theories about the origins of the collection.

The first was posited by Snyder in an e-mail last week: “Due to the folds of the newspapers and the absence of any handwritten subscriber name or other markings, I believe these copies were folded, inserted into envelopes, and mailed long-distance – possibly to a relative, friend, or more likely to a religious organization that sympathized with Mr. Carhart’s endeavors.

Snyder says he has not been able to find any Carharts in Lancaster County but said there are about 35 within Pennsylvania.

“From your historical account, it appears that Mr. Carhart was quite the salesman,” Snyder wrote, “and it would be quite likely that he sent his papers far and wide to gain support for the cause.”

Carhart did indeed send several copies of The Clarendon News back east to encourage settlement of his colony, and the fact that the collection was accompanied by other papers from Texas may lend credence to Snyder’s theory.

But there could be another explanation for the papers. Estlack believes the collection could actually be the newspaper’s missing archives, which he said could also explain the absence of subscriber information on the copies.

“We know the newspaper had copies of these early issues up through the early 20th century because they quoted from them,” Estlack said. “But after the 1920s and 1930s, they are never mentioned again; and we know by the time my family purchased The Clarendon News in 1945, those original issues were gone.”

Estlack said he believes a former publisher or editor took the old issues and kept them privately and that they have just now surfaced, possibly in an estate sale.

“We’re going to do some research, but we may never know the whole story,” Estlack said. “The important thing is that they are here now, and we will soon have a much better understanding of our local history.”

Information from the collection will be reprinted during next July’s Pioneer Edition, but for now the priority of the Enterprise is to secure the papers and preserve them for future generations.