The Free Press and the St. Joseph Valley Register: Colfax's paper

1836–1887

The second paper: The Free Press was established in 1836 by William Millikan and ran, in the 1907 history's words, "fairly successful for a time; but after nine years was discontinued." In September 1845 its plant and fixtures were bought by Albert W. West and Schuyler Colfax, and on 12 September 1845 the first number of the St. Joseph Valley Register was issued, "with the name of Schuyler Colfax as editor" — the paper that made Colfax, who edited it into a congressional seat, Speaker's chair, and the vice presidency. One point in the Colfax record stands in two forms. The biographical record — the city's 2013 resolution honoring him and his Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame biography — has Colfax hired as editor of the Free Press in 1842, at nineteen. Howard's press chapter, written within living memory of the paper, names no editor for the Free Press at all and begins Colfax's editorship with the Register in 1845. Both stand as the record gives them.

The Register was a Whig paper, and Colfax's first editorial position on the question of the age survives in Howard's quotation: the editor was "opposed both to Calhounism and Birneyism, that is, opposed on the one hand to the nullification and pro-slavery doctrines of Calhoun, and on the other, to the ultra and one-sided abolitionism of Birney, and fixedly opposed to enlarging the borders of slavery even one inch." Colfax became sole proprietor after seven months. At the start of the third year the paper was enlarged to a seven-column folio. When the telegraph reached South Bend in 1848 the Register used it at once: the issue of 27 December 1849 printed New York dispatches which, by the difference of solar time, apparently arrived twenty-five minutes before they were sent, and its editor was charged with writing the first message sent over the new 800-mile through line from Buffalo to Milwaukee. Colfax was nominated for Congress in 1851 and defeated — James Davis held the editorial chair during the campaign — and in July 1853 the paper installed a Northrup power press printing a thousand copies an hour. Colfax was elected to Congress in 1854, Alfred Wheeler became editor, and in April 1857 the partnership of Colfax & Wheeler was formed; Wheeler afterward became sole owner, then a partner with a Mr. Hall.

In November 1865 Archibald Beal, for eight years proprietor of the Mishawaka Enterprise, bought the Register with C. E. Fuller, and in 1867 two young men then engaged on the paper, Alfred B. Miller and Elmer Crockett, bought Fuller's interest — the firm of Beal, Miller and Company. In January 1872 Beal bought Miller and Crockett out, and Howard records the consequence in one sentence: "the Register was weakened by the withdrawal of Mr. Miller, Mr. Crockett and others, in 1872." The two men carried their skills across town and founded the Tribune within weeks. Under Beal the Register passed to company form — the Register Company in August 1875, the Register Printing Company on 13 October 1875 — and began a daily edition on 18 September 1875, with a Sunday edition for a time. It did not recover its standing. In 1887, "after a notable career of over forty years, the famous journal was discontinued, the plant and fixtures being sold to the Tribune Printing Company." Brown's history gives the same end in the acquirer's terms: in 1887 the Tribune bought the Register's name and equipment, and the publisher of the Register retired.

Sources:

1. Timothy E. Howard, History of St. Joseph County (1907), Chapter VII, §2 — the Free Press (1836, Millikan), the West and Colfax purchase of September 1845, the first Register of 12 September 1845, the slavery editorial, the telegraph items, the 1853 power press, the Beal purchase of 1865, the 1867 and 1872 changes, the daily of 18 September 1875, and the discontinuance of 1887.
2. City of South Bend Resolution 4226-13 (2013) and the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame biography of Schuyler Colfax — the 1842 Free Press editorship at nineteen; the conflict with Howard's chapter is printed in the entry (carried in the Sources chapter).
3. George Brown, History of St. Joseph County (1920), Chapter IX — the Register "always opposed to slavery," and the 1887 sale of name and equipment to the Tribune.