Mapleton borough

The Flea Bite at Newton Hamilton

On Christmas Day 1879, B. E. Morrison began a four-page newspaper in Newton Hamilton. The 1886 history of the Susquehanna and Juniata valleys says it began under the title the Flea Bite. An 1897 encyclopedia of the Juniata Valley spells the title The Flee Bite and calls the paper “the first newspaper ever issued in Newton Hamilton.” That sketch says Morrison set the type himself, with help from Prof. G. W. Alloway, and that “the first issue was 1,000.” The two books also disagree on the size. The history gives five by eight, in two columns. The 1897 sketch gives six by nine inches.

The history gives March 13, 1880 as the day the name changed to the Watchman, and the Library of Congress directory of newspapers agrees. The directory’s record for the Flea Bite begins with the December 25, 1879 issue, and its record for the Watchman begins with the March 13 issue. The directory also quotes a line from the paper: “Devoted to morality, good sense and intelligence.” The 1897 sketch says the change came after six months.

By July 23, 1880, the Huntingdon Journal was calling it the Newton Hamilton Watchman. The Journal reported that the paper would come out daily during the Juniata Valley camp meeting, at 25 cents for ten numbers. The sketch says that for several years during the camp-meeting season it ran as an eight-page daily for about two weeks, and gives its motto as “Ogniuno per se e Dio per tutti,” meaning “Every man for himself and God for us all.” The history records two enlargements: to a four-column quarto on June 19, 1880, and to eight pages on January 8, 1881.

In February 1886 the Centre Democrat of Bellefonte reported that the Watchman, owned by B. S. Morrison, had been sold on an execution issue by Philadelphia creditors. The Centre Democrat gives him the initials B. S., not the B. E. of the history, and does not say who bought the paper. The paper kept going, by these accounts. The sketch says Morrison enlarged it in 1891 from four to six columns, as an eight-page weekly. In March 1892 the Juniata Sentinel of Mifflintown still wrote of “Morrison of the Newton Hamilton Watchman.” The Democratic Watchman of Bellefonte, a different paper, called him “Editor Morrison, of the Newton Hamilton Watchman” in February 1895, and mentioned the Newton Hamilton paper again in February 1904. A 1991 county inventory of historic engineering and industrial sites cites a Watchman issue of May 17, 1890, as quoted in Huntingdon Daily News columns from December 1966 to January 1967. That issue reported that a survey crew had gone through the area “a few years ago,” setting stakes and stone markers along the canal bed. The directory gives 1907 as the Watchman’s end, with a question mark.

Another paper in Newton Hamilton, the Standard, was established on November 20, 1885, according to the history, by H. C. Kinsloe as proprietor, with Kinsloe and W. M. Doughman as editors. In February 1886 the Juniata Sentinel reported that the Standard would publish the Juniata Methodist, a paper devoted to the interests of the Methodist church. On April 30, 1886, the Democratic Watchman of Bellefonte noted the new paper, edited by the Rev. Amos S. Baldwin, with G. Murray Klepper as associate editor. The 1897 encyclopedia says that on February 13, 1889, Isaac Newton Swope bought the material of the defunct Standard from Kinsloe. It says Swope added to it and on April 10, 1889, began publishing the Mapleton Item.

Checked against the record. We checked the 1886 history and the 1897 encyclopedia’s sketches of Morrison and Swope on their page images, and each newspaper item on its page in the Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive. The 1991 inventory and the Library of Congress directory were read as text. The Democratic Watchman of Bellefonte is a different paper from the Newton Hamilton Watchman. The sources disagree on the title’s spelling, the size and the date of the change to the Watchman. We give March 13, 1880, which the history and the directory agree on, and note that the sketch’s six months is its own account. The claim that it was the town’s first newspaper comes from the 1897 sketch, and we have not tested it. The 1880 and 1881 enlargements are known from the history’s account, and we found the 1886 sale in one newspaper so far. We have not read a copy of the Flea Bite, the Watchman or the Standard. A search of the Huntingdon Journal and the Juniata Sentinel for December 1879 to April 1880 found no notice of the launch or the new name, though scanned text can miss a word. What stays open: who bought the paper in 1886, how Morrison kept it running, and when it ended.

Sources