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Home Texas Taylor County Abilene Abilene Reporter-News
     

Abilene Reporter-News

  Texas Historical Markers
Cypress & N. 1st St., Abilene, TX, USA

Latitude & Longitude: 32° 26' 59.32831999992", -99° 44' 2.34547000008"
 
    Texas State
Historical Marker
    The oldest existing business institution in Abilene is the Reporter Publishing Company, started by C. E. Gilbert. The first newspaper was printed on June 17, 1881, three months after the town was founded. Soon after Gilbert began publication, a fire destroyed several buildings in town, including his office. He rode the train to Baird (21 miles east) and, using borrowed presses, published an extra edition about the blaze. Two other Abilene papers were started in the 1880s. Part-time preacher W. L. Gibbs began the Magnetic Quill in 1882. Three years later Gilbert's printer, James L. Lowry, began the Taylor County News. One of Lowry's early editions covered a duel between Gilbert and Gibbs, both of whom survived. Later Reporter owners were Dr. Alf H. H. Toler, John Hoeny, Jr., George S. Anderson, and Marshall Bernard Hanks, a former delivery boy for the paper who was publisher from 1906 to 1948. In 1911 the Reporter bought the News, resulting in the present name. Hanks and Houston Harte of San Angelo formed the Harte-Hanks organization, now a national communications firm, which includes the Reporter-News, whose motto is: Without or with offense to friends or foes we sketch your world exactly as it goes. -Byron.

This page last updated: 7/15/2008

Abilene Reporter-News Historical Marker Location Map, Texas