WESTERN COURIER. --- EXTRA. Ravenna, September 8, 1832. [ Caption title, followed by three columns on dense text recto and three longer columns of dense text verso, the columns separated by bold rules].

Ravenna, OH: The newspaper, September 8, 1832. Printed broadsheet newspaper extra, 15 ¼ x 10 ¼ inches, 39cm. the head printed in bold capitals. The recto of extra, under the title “More Church & State: Combination to Overawe the Press,” prints the editor’s defense of his previous printing of a subscriber’s opinion on the so-called “Meeting-House case”; a reprint of the opinion piece appears on the verso, under the title “Church and State.” The issue involved an 1828 vote by the Board of Commissioners, consisting of several Presbyterians, to override the intended public use of a county-owned lot to build a Presbyterian meeting house on it. Upon publication of the opinion piece objecting to this “union of Church and State” in the Western Courier, several subscribers cancelled their subscriptions. The editor, John Harmon, prints here their names and reminds all of his subscribers of the principles upon which a “Free Press” is based, a well-warranted admonition to his community to be mindful of the separation of church and state. Harmon purchased and published the Western Courier, the Democratic organ of Portage County from 1832-1836; the paper was originally established in 1825 with an initial subscription list of 320, that number doubling in its first six months, and it ceased publication in 1838. Ravenna, Ohio, and vicinity experienced an increase in sectarian disputes in the early 1830s, with an anti-Masonic party on the rise and negative reactions to Joseph Smith and the Mormons who had established a community in Kirtland, Ohio, in 1831. Smith and his wife were living about 15 miles from Ravenna in early 1832, in Hiram, when a mob tarred and feathered him after dragging him from his house. [Cf. Jennifer Seymour’s short history of the Western Courier written for the National Digital Newspaper Program in Ohio.] Folded (long separation at central fold), chip in margin (not affecting text), soiled, inscription in upper margin (partially inked out, illegible). Item #63940

Price: $1,500.00