The Rahway News-Record (1822- 1994)
Submitted by Al Shipley, City Historian and Rahway Library Research Consultant
In this present age of Google, Twitter, and Facebook, it might be hard for many of the younger generations to perceive that for over 200 years local newspapers were a vital part of almost every city, both large and small, throughout the country. Whether published on a daily, bi-weekly, or weekly basis, these papers would eventually evolve and become the sole sources of information that not only presented an account of the important news, but also included the minutia that made up the fabric of each community. By the 1990s and into the early years of the 21st century, however, most of these local papers would go out of business due in large part to the increasing cost of staffing and the loss of advertising and subscription revenue that had shifted to the more lucrative electronic media. In Rahway, the Rahway News-Record shut their presses down in 1994, ending the run of one of the nation’s oldest newspapers that dated back to 1822.
In 1804, the four villages that made up present day Rahway (Upper Rahway, which included much of what is now Clark Township, Bridgetown, Leesville, and Milton) consolidated to form Rahway Township. A letter written in 1818 suggests that in little more than a dozen years the township had grown large enough to perhaps support a newspaper. In that year, a New Brunswick man, Nathaniel L. Combs, wrote to a Dr. Manning of Rahway seeking backers to help him start a newspaper business. As there is no substantial proof that a paper was ever published in Rahway prior to 1822, it is likely that Combs was not successful in securing his sponsors.
Research does show that on July 13, 1822 Rahway’s first newspaper, The Bridgetown Museum and New Jersey Advocate was published. It was a four page weekly that came out on Saturdays. The editor was Smith Edgar whose shop was located on Main Street. At the time the paper was established, there were only seven other papers being published in all of New Jersey.
The early papers did not resemble in content or layout the papers we recognize today and actually gave little in the way of news. Instead, they included stories, many in serial form, poems, songs, bits of advice, advertising, and editorial opinions. It would not be until the 1880s and 1890s that editors began to include “news items,” usually placed among ads on pages 2 or 3.
In 1828, the name Bridgetown Museum was dropped from the mast and the publication became the New Jersey Advocate. This would begin the first of several name changes and mergers in the life of the publication that would eventually become the Rahway News-Record.
By the 1830s, Rahway’s population had grown to 3,000 and the area was described as having “300 – 400 homes, at least 25 stores, 5 churches, 2 schools, 3 taverns, a post office, a bank, several mills and factories, and considerable farm acreage.” It had become a bigger and more diverse town with people who had differing opinions on all manner of topics, especially politics, and it might be said that it was politics that had a hand in the creation of competing newspapers.
During the presidential campaign of 1840, the New Jersey Advocate supported the Whig Party candidate, William Henry Harrison. The highly charged political rivalry between Harrison and the Democratic incumbent, Martin Van Buren, gave rise to a new publication with democratic leanings, the Democratic-Republican.
The next two decades saw the birth of several more publications, mergers, and name changes, the history and order of each tends to be confusing. Between 1850 and 1870, Rahway was supporting at least three to four publications. During the Civil War years, political debates in Rahway were heated, especially because so much of the city’s economy relied on business with the southern states. As a result, newspapers were started and mergers consummated that would further serve as platforms for editorial expression. Rahway’s first daily publication came out in 1878 under the unique masthead, the Daily Rahwegian. The New Jersey Advocate, the paper whose roots dated back to 1822, became the Union National Democrat during the war years and in 1891 merged again and became the News Herald.
By the turn of the century, only two papers remained. Of the two, the Daily Record, which still had a historical link to the 1822 paper, bought out its final competitor in 1911 and renamed itself the Rahway Record.
The Record remained the city’s sole newspaper until 1930 when the Rahway News was established. For the next 16 years, the two papers would vie for increased readership and advertising dollars as each professed to offer the predominant opinions of the citizenry. The rivalry ended in 1945 when a merger was amicably struck and on Thursday, February 7, 1946, the first issue of the Rahway News-Record hit the stands. In a front page article, the editors wrote, “It is hoped that through the combining of the two separate publications that the public can be better served… A community newspaper belongs to the community at large not any small or large group of citizens representing any individual or separate classification.”
The Rahway News-Record covered the news faithfully and honestly for the next 48 years until 1994 when the 172-year history of Rahway’s oldest paper came to an end. Within the year, a new publication, the Rahway Progress, took on the task of news gathering and was able to remain solvent until 2008 when it too shut down. Today, newspapers such as Our Town have taken on the role of highlighting the news of interest in local communities.
