Titus County, Texas History - The Mt. Pleasant Daily Times

THE MT. PLEASANT DAILY TIMES AND TIMES REVIEW

Aaron Smith purchased the Titus County Times from W. E. Blythe in approximately 1894, give or take a few years either way, and operated the newspaper as a weekly. Aaron Smith was a very intelligent, interesting, and highly accomplished person. He was born with no arms or hands, but overcame his handicap to accomplish more during his life than most people without handicaps achieve. Aaron Smith was born and raised in Miller County, Arkansas, and Cass County, Texas, and moved to Mt. Pleasant with his family in 1888 at age 20. He became a licensed attorney under the tutelage of S.P. Pounders, Mt. Pleasant attorney and one of Mt. Pleasant's first City Aldermen, but found practicing law to be impractical for him because someone else had to handle papers and turn pages for him when he was in court.

He purchased the local newspaper while still in his mid 20's, and pressed the typewriter keys with a stick held between his teeth. It is also said that he could type with his toes. Smith changed the newspaper's content from carrying mostly local gossip to printing substantial articles, political opinion, and championing other hot topics of its day. Very active in politics, he changed the paper's name to the Mt. Pleasant Times Review and aligned it politically with the Bryan element of the national Democratic Party and the Hogg political forces in Texas. The Times Review also backed the principles of local option and later prohibition of the sale of intoxicating beverages.

In the summer of 1899 Smith sold the Times Review to George M. "Dan" Roberts and moved to Weatherford where he published the Weatherford Democrat until early 1908. Smith later went on to publish several other newspapers and magazines and founded Branch-Smith Publishing of Ft. Worth, Texas, which later generations of his family still operate.

In addition to publishing the newspaper, George M. Roberts was Mt. Pleasant's first City Secretary when the city was incorporated in 1900. Again quoting Mr. Jurney, George M. Roberts published the paper for several years until he went to Washington as private secretary to Congressman Morris Sheppard. Little is known about the newspaper while Roberts owned it, other than J. M. Harris was the editor from 1913-1914. Roberts leased the paper to W. W. Slaughter and several others until around 1919, when P. R. Masters purchased the paper. He operated the Times Review as a weekly and also published a daily paper called "The Hustler".

George William ("Bill") Cross purchased the newspapers from P. R. Masters on December 8, 1924 and merged the papers into the Mt. Pleasant Daily Times, a daily paper, and Times Review, a weekly.

According to Traylor Russell, in his book "Pioneers and Heroes of Titus County," George William Cross was born in Salisaw, Oklahoma in 1886. He came to Pittsburg, Texas as a teen-ager where he began working for the Pittsburg Gazette. Next he went into the U. S. Army in 1917, served in the Aerial Squadron in Europe, and was discharged in latter 1918. He briefly returned to Pittsburg, then moved to Gurdon, Arkansas where he bought the Gurdon Times. He published the Gurdon Times until February, 1920, when he purchased the Mt. Pleasant Daily Times and Times Review and moved to Mt. Pleasant.

The Mt. Pleasant Daily Times and Times Review were located in the Burford Building with Irvin-Robertson Chevrolet when the Cross family purchased the newspapers. The Burford Building is now (2008) 401 North Jefferson, where Firmin's Office Supply is located.

EARLY TITUS COUNTY NEWSPAPERS

The date when a newspaper was first published in Titus County is not known, but according to Traylor Russell's History of Titus County, Texas, it is doubtless that one was started not long after the county's creation in 1846, "because it was the usual history of East Texas counties that someone would start the publication of a newspaper due to the fact that there were many legal notices that had to be published."

The following sequence of newspapers published and other information about them are quoted from R. L. Jurney's book "History of Titus County, Texas 1846-1960". Mr. Jurney says that before the Civil War and for some years thereafter, the Northern Standard published at Clarksville, Texas was the principal newspaper read in this area.

The first Titus County newspaper that Mr. Jurney could find a record of was "The Union," first published in 1855 by Messrs. Marple and Obie. The Union was later purchased by a man named Carpenter who published it until sometime after the Civil War.

After the War, a Doctor Adams published "The Patron," a weekly newspaper published each Friday. He later sold The Patron to W. J. Johnson, who owned it around 1872. Johnson in turn sold it to W. E. Blythe. The Patron was published under many different names over the years, and eventually became the "Titus County Times," Titus County's only newspaper at the time.

In March 1957, William Norman "Dub" Furey and Mt. Pleasant associates bought The Mount Pleasant Daily Times and Times Review from Hugh Cross and Theda Cross Porter.

Furey, was a third generation Texas newspaperman for 43 years. His grandfather, William Norman "Billy" Furey came to Texas in 1869 from Alabama and worked for two newspapers in Dallas (predecessors of The Dallas Morning News and The Dallas Times Herald) and later The Bonham Favorite and The Paris News. In 1881, Furey's grandfather, with A. P. Boyd, established The Paris News as a daily paper.

In 1929, A. G. "Pat" Mayse, publisher of The Paris News for Harte-Hanks Newspapers, employed Furey as a cub reporter. He advanced rapidly with the organization serving as sports editor and wire desk editor. In 1934, he married Sarah Sims of Paris. She began work with him in 1936 and continued beside him the rest of his career. In 1935, at age 24, he became managing editor of The Paris News, and was at that time the youngest editor of any daily newspaper in Texas.

In August 1959, he bought the stock of his associates in the Mount Pleasant Daily Times and Times Review, becoming sole owner. He enlarged the paper's coverage, circulation, and equipment and real estate holdings. The Daily Times bought the vacant Taylor Hospital building next to the newspaper office and converted it into offices for the newspaper's use.

Due to ill health, the Fureys sold the Mount Pleasant Daily Times and Times Review to Robert B. Palmer, Mary Palmer, and Hazel Palmer, owners of the Mount Pleasant Daily Tribune, in the summer of 1972. W. N. Furey's retirement in 1972 ended his family's 103 years of continuous newspaper service in Texas. W.N. Furey passed away June 28, 1981 after a long illness. He is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Paris, Texas.

They also added Model 14 linotype machines, which were cutting-edge in their day, to set the newspaper's type. The five linotype machines were located in the rear of the building along the east wall next to the Post Office. A linotype machine is a rather large machine, measuring approximately 6' tall and 3' wide, that uses molten lead to create type to use in the presses. An operator sits at the front of the machine and types a line of news copy on a keyboard much like a typewriter. The linotype machine then releases a measured amount of molten lead alloy called linotype to cast the typewritten words into a strip of lead that contains one line of the story to be printed. Each lead strip is a uniform height, but its thickness varies depending on the point size (height) of the typed characters. The letters composing the line of type extend approximately 1/16" above the top surface of the lead strip. Once the strips are molded and cooled, they are arranged in the order the lines are to be read into a wooden type tray to create the newspaper page. The entire page of type to be printed is then set into the press, which uses a heavy rubber roller to apply a very thin film of thick printer's ink across the top of the raised letters. Finally, the newsprint (paper) is rolled over the inked lead type and another roller applies pressure to the paper to transfer the typewritten image to the newsprint. When the print run is finished, the lead type is removed from the trays and melted to be used to set type for the next edition. The same linotype machines and press were used until 1972.

The Daily Times was typeset with linotype, which consists of lead blocks with letters that compose headlines or lines of body type molded into them. Large blocks like these were used for headline type, and sentences of body type were long strips that were slightly wider than the type itself to provide white space between the lines. The blocks and lines of body type are arranged into the proper order, locked into a metal frame that held the type for an entire page, and the frame was put into the press. In one pass the press rolls ink onto the type characters, which are raised above the block's surface. In a following motion, rolled paper is pulled across the inked linotype and a rubber roller presses the paper onto the inked type surface, transferring the letter images to the paper and printing an entire page at once. In later steps, the press cuts the pages and folds them to create a finished newspaper.