Newspaper Busy Bee (Buckhannon, W. Va.) 1884-1898

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About Busy Bee (Buckhannon, W. Va.) 1884-1898

The Busy Bee was a weekly newspaper published on Fridays in Buckhannon, the county seat of Upshur County, West Virginia, beginning in 1884. The Bee‘s original editorial team consisted of two women, May Grove & Ida Lovett. The March 10, 1884 issue of the Wheeling Register reported that the Bee had “young ladies… at its head” who were “bright and chock-full of energy.” May Grove had previously been employed by the federal government at a printing office in Washington, D.C, and prior to the launch of the Bee had worked under her father Jacob R. Grove at the Weston Hawkeye. The Hawkeye was also founded by a woman, temperance advocate Mrs. E.M. Gibson. Yet despite these relatively unique beginnings, May’s father, the Bee‘s initial proprietor, would eventually take over editorial duties from his daughter and her colleague, sometime between July 1884 and September 1887. During the first decade of its existence, the Bee ran at four pages per issue, with at least one special issue of eight pages in December of 1886. Under the elder Grove’s tenure, the paper’s front page was plastered with headlines containing words like “Disaster”, “Bloodshed”, “Watery Graves”, “Wildman”, “Fatal”, “Fearful”, and “Combat” – to name some from a single issue!

In the late 1880s the Bee carried ads for dry goods and patent medicine while also spotlighting “Local Items/Business” and running a “Personals” column. And although it was deemed “independent” in its politics by the Wheeling Daily Intelligencer, the Bee had a discernible pro-temperance bent. This was evidenced by the many positive mentions the Bee garnered in Parkersburg’s Freeman and its predecessor the West Virginia Freeman, notable temperance papers, as well as Lovett’s Woman’s Christian Temperance Union membership and the Groves’ association with Gibson. At one dollar per year, the Bee proudly proclaimed to its readers the punny slogan “We hive the news from all quarters,” one which it kept even after it switched hands to Joseph Wesley (“J.W.”) Walden in December of 1890.

Under Walden, the Bee was as much of a family affair as it had been during the days of the Groves, if not even more so. In 1892, J.W. brought on his younger brother Marvin Walden as “Junior Editor,” and “Walden Bros.” began appearing on the Bee‘s masthead as its publisher. The brothers also increased the Bee‘s page count to eight in 1893 while making single issues five cents a copy. And in January of 1894, the Waldens declared that the Bee‘s political affiliation would henceforth be Democratic. Yet tragically Marvin died shortly thereafter, in May of 1894, at the age of only 20. J.W. thus changed his publishing company’s name to “J.W. Walden & Co.,” until another of his brothers, Charles William (“C.W.”) Walden joined him at the Bee, at which point he reverted to the company’s original name. Walden and the Bee would see tragedy strike again in 1894, when a fire destroyed the building in downtown Buckhannon where the paper was printed. The paper would be suspended indefinitely afterwards, and not for the first time. A five-month suspension likewise occurred under Groves circa 1888, but despite these breaks the Bee‘s volume and issue numbering remained consistent across its entire existence.

That existence would cease in 1898. Somewhere in the four-year span between the fire and the Bee‘s shuttering it had been associated with Captain W.S. O’Brien, but he left in 1896 to establish another Buckhannon paper with Hugh Lorenz, the Knight-Errant, leaving the Waldens to chart their course alone. The Bee, while remaining at eight pages even in its final year, greatly reduced the number of columns it printed, and consequently increased the size of the text it printed. It furthermore reduced its cost to 75 cents per year. This was not enough to keep the Bee afloat, however, and by January of 1899 “J.W. Walden” was set to take over the Harpers Ferry Sentinel according to the Wheeling Sunday Register.