Local History
Newspapers
​
Farewell
​
The Lancaster Review (1878 - 1905)
"It is with no little degree of sadness that we "get out" this issue of the Review, which is to be the last within its history. The feeling is akin to that occasioned by the loss of an old, true and tried friend. For more than twenty years we have labored at this desk to make the Review a welcome visitor in the homes of its patrons, and it is but natural that in that long period of time we should have become attached to the paper itself. The fact, too, that the best years of our life have been spent on its pages makes the old Review doubly dear to us. Little did we think, until recently, that we would survive our old newspaper friend. On the contrary, more than once has the thought occurred to us when chronicling the passing away of others that some day the task would devolve on another to render a similar service to us in these columns.
​
"But the writer is not alone in his sorrow over the death, so to speak, of the Review. That feeling is of course shared by Maj. Riddle, who has been our business associate throughout our entire connection with the paper. Twenty one years ago last spring we together purchased The Review, and continuously since that time have we together labored to make it what it is today. many were our trials and vicissitudes, but, thanks to a kind Providence, we successfully overcame them all.
​
"Nor is the regret at the Review's passing away confined to its publishers, those most directly concerned. Many of its readers, since the fact became known that the three Lancaster newspapers are to be absorbed by a new company, have expressed to us regret that the Review was to be discontinued. There are on our subscription books the names of many citizens of Lancaster county and elsewhere who have been reading the paper ever since it was established, some twenty-seven years ago. And it is but natural to suppose that they, and others who have been taking the paper for years, will be reluctant to see the old Review pass out of existence--a messenger that has faithfully borne to them for so many years the news of the day, sometimes its tidings being of joy and sometimes of sorrow.
​
"The Review was founded in 1878, by the late B.F. Welsh and the late J.J. Hull. In 1881 it was purchased by Mr. Paul Moore, who, after running it three years, sold it to its present owners. For more than a quarter of a century, therefore, the Review has been closely identified with Lancaster's history. It has seen the town grow from a small, staid municipality to its present gratifyingly large and constantly increasing dimensions. It has seen the country rise from an indifferent state of cultivation to its present high standard of productiveness. It has seen nice, comfortable, well furnished dwellings take the place of old and cheerless farm houses, and modern churches and school houses spring up where none stood before. These and many other improvements that might be mentioned have been brought about during the life of this newspaper. To what extent, if any, the Review has contributed to the betterment of conditions generally, we do not undertake to say. But there is one thing we do know, and that is that the influence of this paper has ever been exerted in behalf of the upbuilding of both town and county along all lines that make for a people's progress--moral, educational, material and otherwise. We therefore close forever the forms of this journal with the consciousness of having done through its columns what we conceived to be our duty to its patrons and to the public generally."
​
written by Charles Thorn Connors (1855 - 1914)
Copy taken from the Lancaster Review
Published in the Lancaster News, October 4, 1905
​
​