The first journal to be issued at Cornwall, or Cornwall-on-the-Hudson was called The Cornwall Paper, a Local Record of Things New and Old. It was published by P. P. Hazen, of Cornwall, in conjunction with A. A. Bensel, of Newburgh, issue No. 1 appearing April 15, 1871. So far as known no other issue of the paper ever appeared.
May 24, 1875, Miss S. J. A. Hussey started the Cornwall Times, which, lived six years.
In 1875 Isaac V. Montanye started the Middletown Argus, a weekly paper. It was merged with the Mercury in 1876, and January 27, 1876, the Daily Argus came forth and still does valiant service. The Daily Argus was started by Cornelius Macardell, Sr., who had money as well as brains, and he made the Argus and the Mercury live democratic papers. George H. Thompson, who soon after leaving college became connected with the concern, and his ready pen and many other good newspaper qualities, soon won the attention of Mr. Macardell, who installed him as editor, which position he retained to his death. The present editor is A. B. Macardell.
An association of printers in Newburgh in October, 1875, started the Daily Penny Post, as a representative of labor and union interests. While the Post was struggling for existence the Daily Mail was started by a rival organization, in 1876. In June of the latter year the Post was discontinued, and having evidently accomplished its purpose, the Mail merged, in 1877, with the Register.
It was in 1876 that the Newburgh Register came into existence, with many vicissitudes and owners, as previously explained, but finally emerging from the Telegraph under the able management of the lamented Edward M. Ruttenber. The Register later passed into the hands of Herbert P. Kimber & Co., who made of it a bright, newsy, democratic paper. Succeeding Mr. Kimber as editor were John A. Mason, Francis Willard and A. L. Moffatt, the latter of whom fought the Bryan element of the democratic party so vigorously that his retirement from the paper in 1907 was a matter of much rejoicing in the ranks of the reigning element of the party in Orange County. The recent editor of the Register was John V. Tucker, whose utterances were evidently more in harmony with the views of the democratic county committee. But the Register suspended publication February 24, 1908.
In 1877 the Cornwall Reflector was started by John Lee. Later H. H. Snelling became editor. The paper lived until the latter part of 1888.
In 1879 James C. Merritt started the Cornwall Mirror at Highland Falls. In 1895 it was merged with the Cornwall Local.
On April 4, 1880, appeared in Port Jervis the first number of the Sunday Morning Call. It was a five-column quarto, neatly printed, ably edited, and destined, as its first number indicated, to make a stir in local social, political and religious circles. It was published by Erwin G. Fowler and A. L. Moffatt, with Mr. Fowler as editor. The latter was bright, witty, ready and fearless, and he girded on his editorial armor and leaped into the arena of local polemics with an ardor and a fearlessness that, for a time, set the town in a furor. He attacked the validity of the bond issue for the Monticello railroad, and came near having the bonds repudiated by the people in accordance with court decisions in similar cases. His iconoclasm aroused the frenzy of those most exposed to his vitriolic assaults, and they sought to muzzle his Call, with the result that the last issue of his fearless paper appeared in December of the same year.
April 23, 1881, appeared in Middletown the Liberal Sentinel, an independent weekly quarto, with John W. and Mrs. Lydia Hasbrouck as editors. The paper was never profitable to them, but it enabled these two benevolent people to again take up, for a time, the battle for human rights—a struggle in which they had practically sacrificed the bloom of their youth and the fruition of years. Mr. Hasbrouck has gone to his reward, after a life of struggle, in his own quiet, unassuming way, with the adverse forces of environment for the betterment of humanity. His noble, self-sacrificing companion through years, yet lives, a martyr to conventionality, a lover of the good, the pure, the true. May her declining days be as peaceful and as beautiful as the summer flowers that shed their fragrance and their luster around her own beautiful habitation on Linden avenue's fair lawn.
On the eighth of September, 1881, was issued at Port Jervis in the office of the Tri-States Publishing Co., the first number of the Orange County Farmer. It was a six-column quarto, and, as its name indicates, was devoted to the interests of the farmer, dairyman, and pomologist. The idea was one of the many conceptions of the fertile brain of Charles St. John, Jr., then the head of the Tri-States Publishing Co., a former supervisor of the town of Deer Park, a son of former Congressman Hon. Charles St. John, a young man who, ere he was out of his teens, was a leader in all the athletic sports of his native village, Port Jervis, active, energetic in business, and brimful of plans and ideas. He was one of the leaders in the county in the liberal republican movement that, in 1872, led to the nomination of Horace Greeley for President, and made the Tri-States Union and the campaign publication, The Woodchopper, red-hot champions of the Sage of Chappaqua. In starting the Orange County Farmer Mr. St. John built far better than he knew, as subsequent events proved. The first number was, editorially, the joint production of himself and his brother-in-law, Fred R. Salmon, then a bookkeeper in the office of the Tri-States Union. Mr. Salmon had been active in the business department, but developed talent in connection with reportorial and editorial lines, and did some clever agricultural work for the first and for many succeeding issues of the Farmer. He was for some time known as managing editor of The Farmer, though after the first issue Erwin G. Fowler, late of the Sunday Call, and a former editor of the Daily Union and of the Middletown Press, and a lover of horticultural matters, became the active editor of The Farmer, with Mr. Salmon as the business manager. Under this joint control, with more or less supervision of Mr. St. John, The Farmer rapidly grew in popularity, in circulation, and in influence. In 1890 Mr. Fowler and John J. Dillon, then connected with the office and now manager of the Rural New Yorker, purchased The Husbandman, an agricultural paper at Elmira, and both retired from The Farmer. Mr. Fowler's successor was William T. Doty, and Mr. Dillon's successor in the business department was William F. Wade, now of the Rural New Yorker. In 1894 Mr. Fowler was again on The Farmer's editorial staff and remained until 1897, when declining health forced his retirement—and his death in 1904 deprived the literary and agricultural world of one of its brightest workers, the social world of one of the most amiable, lovable, benevolent members, and Orange County's musical set an able leader.