The Mount Union Times

The Mount Union Times, printers and publishers, and the reason we know as much about this town as we do.

It was run by A. S. and C. H. Welch, father and son, as editors. In the summer of 1909 the son, Charles Howard Welch, decided to write a history of Mount Union. He did not set out to write a book. The first instalment appeared in the Mount Union Times on 10 September 1909, and he expected a brief sketch.

In his own words at the end of it: “As the hidden treasures of interesting historical narrative have unfolded, the prospect has widened.” The sketch ran to several hundred pages and became the book this site quotes on almost every Mount Union page. It was printed in the Times office.

The Times was not the town's only paper. Welch records a County Bulletin, run by Orthello Z. Shaver, which a young compositor named John S. Kirk joined in February 1900 — and which had “since passed out of existence” by the time Welch wrote. Kirk moved to the Times in October 1900 and was its foreman when the history was being set.

From the record

Passages about this subject, quoted from county histories now in the public domain. Each one names the book and the position in the text so it can be checked. Spelling is as printed.

No paper was published in Mount Union from the ary, 1878, when H. E. Shaffer started the Mount Union Times, a seven-column weekly, with new material and imported outside. Mr. Shaffer continued the Times successfully until the summer of 1875, when Dr. G. W. Thompson, Rev. Cyrus Jeffries, Joseph Bardine, B. F. Douglas, and John H. Miller formed a company under the firm-name of Dr. G. W. Thompson & Co., and bought the office and paper for fourteen hundred dollars. They changed the name of the paper to The People's Era, and continued it as a weekly for some months with Rev. Cyrus Jeffries as editor, and John H. Miller as local editor. In a few weeks Joseph Bardine took the place of the latter as local editor, but the paper was far from being a success, and in the fall of the same year John M. Bowman, of Johnstown, bought the paper, and rechristened it the Mount Union Times, and printing both sides at home, ran it until August, 1877, when the paper was sold to W. T. Bair, of the Shirleysburg Herald. T. Bair had started the Mount Union Herald, a three-column weekly folio, in September, 1875, and after a year moved it to Shirleysburg.) Mr. Bair published the Times (part of the time printing both sides and then the inside only) until August, 1879, when it was bought by Dr. A. R.J. Simpson Africa, History of Huntingdon and Blair Counties, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1883) · character 432,026 of the scanned text

In Mifflin , the Belleville Times, the Lewistown Gazette, the Lewistown Democrat, the Lewistown Sentinel (daily), the McVeytown Journal, and the Newton Hamilton Herald. In Juniata , the Mifflintown Herald, the Mifflintown Sentinel, the Mifflintown Tribime, the Port Royal Times, and the Thompsontown Globe. All the papers included in this list are published weekly unless otherwise indicated. One educational influence of a local character that deserves mention in this connection was the Perry County Historical Society. It grew out of the old Philomathean Literary Society of the New Bloomfield Academy and its history begins with the meeting of November 12, 1880, when it was decided to add to the exercises of the society the reading of papers bearing on local history. John A.John W. Jordan, ed., History of the Juniata Valley and Its People (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing, 1913) · character 835,207 of the scanned text

The particulars in most cases will be found in the history of the townships where these events occurred. The business of the land office is a pretty good indication of the sense of security felt by the people of the province in these perilous times. From Feb. 8, 1755, to the month of June of that year a dozen or more warrants were granted for land in Huntingdon and Blair. During the seven years immediately following there does not appear to have been any issued. On May 31, 1762, several warrants were taken out for lands on the Aughwick, on the Frankstown Branch, and in other localities, and from that date business was quite active during the balance of that and the first half of the succeeding year. The only entry for 1764 appears to be George Croghan's application for a warrant for the Standing Stone tract, then neld by improvement. The next year, 1765, a dozen or more warrants were taken out, and in 1766 a much greater number. In the latter year the "application system" was introduced, and hundreds of persons availed themselves of the opportunities it afforded of obtaining land on advantageous terms, and from the time at which this plan was put into operation, Aug. 1, 1766, until the close of the land office during the war of the Revolution but few warrants were issued.J. Simpson Africa, History of Huntingdon and Blair Counties, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1883) · character 159,539 of the scanned text

Checked 2026-09-09 · Historic Mount Union collection

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