The Californian (1840s newspaper)
The Californian was the first California newspaper.
History
The Californian was first published in Monterey, California on August 15, 1846,[1] by Alcalde Walter Colton and his friend Robert B. Semple, from a well-used Ramage printing press that Agustín V. Zamorano brought from Hawaii to Monterey in 1834.[2] Zamorano used it to print books, letterheads and proclamations, but not a newspaper.[3] When Commodore Robert F. Stockton arrived in Monterey with the American naval invasion in July 1846, he found the printing press stored in the Custom House and notified Colton.[3]
The paper Colton and Semple printed on was
The Californian moved to Yerba Buena, as San Francisco was then called, in mid-1847. The city was about to undergo rapid changes as the California gold rush got underway. The newspaper did not report about the discovery of gold because word spread so quickly from person to person. The Californian was forced to shut down May 29, 1848, because its entire staff had departed for the gold fields. Its rival newspaper, the California Star run by Mormon Samuel Brannan and Edward C. Kemble, suspended publication for the same reason on June 14.
Both The Californian and the California Star were bought in 1848 and their printing equipment was combined into one publication, the
References
- ^ Library of Congress. About This Newspaper: The Californian Retrieved on July 28, 2009.
- ^ a b c d e f g h The Historic Ramage Press from columbiagazette.com/ramage.html, retrieved on July 28, 2009.
- ^ a b San Francisco chronology 1846-1849 from sfmuseum.org/hist/chron1.html accessed October 10, 2018.
- ^ a b California Newspapers from city-data.com accessed on October 10, 2018
- ^ Historical Society of Southern California, Los Angeles County Pioneers of Southern California. Southern California Quarterly, Volume 5, p. 215. Historical Society of Southern California, 1901.