Shirleysburg borough

The Shirleysburg Herald, 1855 to 1866

Shirleysburg was made a borough by the legislature at its session in the winter of 1836 and 1837, and the list of its burgesses opens with John Lutz, who served in 1837, 1841 and 1854. On 1 February 1855 John Lutz started the Herald at Shirleysburg, a weekly independent paper. At the end of its first year it passed to John G. Long and then to Benjamin F. Miller, under whom it was suspended for a short time. On 7 January 1858 Lutz took it back, with his son Benjamin as assistant editor and printer.

The county histories of 1883 and 1909 say that on 28 July 1859 the establishment was sold to R. Milton Speer for removal to Huntingdon, and that Lutz bade his readers adieu. The Herald's material was bought, and on 3 August 1859 it started a new Democratic weekly at Huntingdon, with Speer as editor and proprietor. Later in 1859 the owner of the Huntingdon Journal sold out to John Lutz of Shirleysburg, and with the Journal's material Lutz resumed the Herald on 4 January 1860. From 30 April to 5 November 1861 it came out twice a week. The Huntingdon Globe quoted the Shirleysburg Herald in September 1860 and November 1861, and in November 1860 it passed along the Herald's report that the mansion house at Brewster's old factory in Hill Valley had burned.

In April 1865 the Globe reported that Benjamin Lutz, the junior editor, lately drafted, had been relieved from duty on account of physical disability. In January 1866 the Ebensburg Alleghanian reported that Benjamin Lutz had become sole editor, "John Lutz having retired." In August 1866 the Globe called the Herald a Republican paper.

In December 1866 the Globe said it understood that a party in Huntingdon had bought the effects of the Herald office and meant to start a paper at Mount Union. It added that there appeared to be truth in the rumor, since the Herald had not come to the Globe for several weeks. The county history of 1883 says the first paper published in Mount Union was the Mount Union Times, issued weekly about 1867 by Adam Harshberger and John S. Bare, with Benjamin Lutz as foreman, on the press previously used at Shirleysburg for the Herald.

Checked against the record. We have not seen an issue of the Herald itself. This story rests on the county histories of 1883 and 1909 and on what other papers printed about it, including the Huntingdon Globe and the Ebensburg Alleghanian. The two histories agree on the founding, the editors, the July 1859 sale and the January 1860 return. They do not say whether the first burgess of 1837 and the founder of the Herald in 1855 were the same John Lutz, and the story does not assert that they were. We did not find the date of the borough act or the Herald's last issue. The Globe's December 1866 item reports a rumor, and the story keeps it at that. Original issues of the Herald would settle the rest.

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