Newspaper Pocahontas Times (Huntersville, W. Va.) 1883-Current
About Pocahontas Times (Huntersville, W. Va.) 1883-Current
The Pocahontas Times began publication in May of 1883 in Huntersville, the then-seat of Pocahontas County, West Virginia. When the county’s seat moved to Marlinton in 1891, the Times followed it, setting up shop there in 1892. With this move came new ownership, the paper having gone through a number of publishers and editors during its first decade of existence. Yet it would be these new owners, the Price family, including the Reverend William T. Price and his sons James, Norman, Andrew, and Calvin, as well as their descendants, who would run the paper in various capacities for more than a century. Calvin in particular would turn the paper into a local institution, buying out the rest of his family in 1906 to become sole owner, publisher, and primary editor until his death in 1957, though Andrew still continued to contribute columns from time to time.
During approximately the first 30 years of the Price family’s tenure, the Times was published weekly, on Thursdays or Fridays, running between 4-8 pages long. In the early 1890s, a Times subscription cost $1.50 per year, though this decreased to $1.00 by 1896. While 1894 issues declared that the Times was “devoted especially to the interests of the farming class,” its slogans would vary considerably through at least the 1920s. Sometimes it adopted West Virginia’s state motto Montani Semper Liberi (“Mountaineers are always free”) while at other times it proclaimed Nullius Addictus Jurare in Verba Magistri, a phrase adopted by London’s Royal Society from the Roman poet Horace. It roughly translates to “take nobody’s word for it.” Around the time Calvin Price succeeded his father and brothers, an excerpt from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Sunrise on the Hills” graced the front page.
Despite these mercurial watchwords, the Times remained stalwart and steadfast in its politics, as the Prices’ conservative Democratic worldview was of a kind with that of the paper’s founding editors. Staunchly pro-temperance and voicing strong support for Prohibition, the Times was likewise fiercely patriotic and nativist even prior to the United States’ entry into the First World War. Indeed, it offered rare praise to West Virginia’s Republican Governor Henry Hatfield in his forced brokering of an end to the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike in 1913. Alongside this assessment appeared a reprint from the Fayette Journal referring to United Mine Workers members as “foreign invaders.” Moreover, the Times had the year prior called for anyone caught “tearing down the flag” to be shot, in reference to a Socialist on trial in New York City for having spit on the country’s emblem. And even before that, Charleston’s leftist paper The Labor Argus mocked the Times‘s repeated attacks on Socialism.
Aside from politics, the Times frequently covered how the county’s denizens and visitors alike took advantage of the area’s rural abundance. Comments on the large local deer population, stories about bear hunting, and travelers’ encounters with mountain lions were just some of what the paper covered from the surrounding woods and hills.
After Calvin Price’s death, his widow Mabel Price took the reins for three years, until she was succeeded by the couple’s daughter Jane Price Sharp in 1960. In 1981, Price Sharp reconstituted the Times, transferring it to its current publishing company, Pocahontas Times, Inc. Under the auspices of this newfound consortium, Price Sharp’s nephew and Calvin and Mabel’s grandson William Price McNeel edited the Times until 2005.
Provided By: West Virginia UniversityAbout this Newspaper
Title
- Pocahontas Times (Huntersville, W. Va.) 1883-Current
Dates of Publication
- 1883-current
Created / Published
- Huntersville, W. Va. : J. Buchanan Canfield
Headings
- - Huntersville (W. Va.)--Newspapers
- - West Virginia--Huntersville
- - United States--West Virginia--Pocahontas--Marlinton
- - United States--West Virginia--Pocahontas--Huntersville
Genre
- Newspapers
Notes
- - Weekly (except the last week of the year)
- - Began May 10, 1883. Cf. Pocahontas Times, May 12, 1983.
- - Paper moved to Marlinton, W. Va. with v. 9, no. 42 (May 5, 1892)--where it is still published.
- - Publishers: James Buchanan Canfield & Hezekiah B. Marshall, 1883-1884; Canfield, 1884-1888; C. Forrest Moore & Samuel B. Loury, 1888-1889; John E. Campbell, 1889-1892; Rev. William T. Price, Andrew Price & Dr. James W. Price, 1892-1906; Calvin Price, 1906-1957; Mabel M. Price, 1957-1960; Jane Ice Sharp, 1960-1981; Pocahontas Times, Inc., 1981-
- - Available on microfilm from U.M.I.
- - Description based on: Vol. 2, no. 16 (Sept. 18, 1884).
Library of Congress Control Number
- sn83004262
OCLC Number
- 9694614
ISSN Number
- 0738-8373
Additional Metadata Formats
Availability
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