Reference has already been made to a well-printed paper issued in Slate Hill or Brookfield, in 1834, the Republican Sentinel. The writer has several well-preserved copies of this neat publication, but when it passed out of existence is not now known. The name of the editor does not appear, nor of the publisher.
Slate Hill in that day was a thriving settlement, and doubtless would have continued to grow had not the Erie railroad come to Goshen in 1842 and to Middletown two or three years later.
IN MIDDLETOWN.
It was in 1840 that the first printing outfit landed in Middletown. In that year A. A. Bensel started the Middletown Courier, a democratic weekly, which he continued until April, 1846, when, apparently scared by the entrance of the Erie railroad, he "pulled up stakes" and never stopped until his outfit was landed in Kingston, N. Y., where he started the Ulster Democrat.
The Orange County News was the second venture in Middletown. This was started in July, 1846, by John S. Brown, and it lived until 1849. It was neutral in politics and evidently in almost everything else, and, it is said, hardly deserved the name of a newspaper.
About 1847 Elder Gilbert Beebe came into town with his Old School Baptist Signs of the Times, which he removed from Alexandria, Va., as already explained. This publication continues, changed somewhat in form but not in method or substance, and remains a monument to the peculiar tenets of the faithful band of adherents of a sturdy theological doctrine. For many years it was printed in the "meeting house" on Orchard street, where the Denton residence now stands, and directly opposite the residence of Elder Beebe. A few years ago, and some time after the death of Elder Beebe, the plant was removed to the upper floor of the brick building at the west corner of East Main and Roberts streets, and the "meeting-house," a plain brick structure, stands on the corner of Roberts and Cottage streets. The Signs is published by J. E. Beebe & Co., and is edited by Elder F. A. Chick, of Hopewell, N. J., and Elder H. C. Kerr, of Middletown.
In 1848 Gilbert Judson Beebe started the Banner of Liberty. It was at first published monthly, eight pages with four columns to a page. After 1856 it became a weekly publication, the same size. It was a rank pro-slavery paper, and opposed and assaulted all lines of modern thought or suggestion of innovation or iconoclasm. This style of polemics met a hearty response in the South and Southwest, and the paper attained a circulation of 27,000 copies. For years it was printed in the old frame structure then known as the Pinkus Building on East Main street, next to the Holding House. When the Civil War broke out its circulation and income were greatly cut down by the interruption of mail communication between the North and the South, and the death of the talented but obdurate and intractable editor, after the war, left nothing for the Banner of Liberty to do but to go somewhere and expire. It did. It went to Ellenville, and shortly was heard of no more.
In 1856 Mr. Beebe published a Campaign Banner.
Gilbert J. Beebe also started in 1848, and in this case may fairly be said to have "established" the Middletown Mercury which as elsewhere stated, became one of the brightest country newspapers in the United States under James H. Norton and Isaac F. Guiwits.
Mr. Beebe printed another paper in his early and more ambitious days. From 1850 to 1852 he ran out an advertising monthly for gratuitous circulation. It was called the Middletown Advertiser.