From the Archives: The Banner's directory trail

Every year, advertising agencies printed thick directories of North America's newspapers, town by town. For a paper that left few copies behind, they are the best trail we have. Here's where the first Chatsworth Banner turns up.

1896. The Banner was in print by that September. The Flesherton Advance of Sept. 24, 1896, reprinted a short item credited to the "Chatsworth Banner" about a local goose laying a second batch of eggs, according to the Grey Highlands Public Library's scans on Our Ontario. McKim's newspaper directory for 1899, in a copy at the Internet Archive, lists "BANNER, weekly; Nelson Bros., publishers; established 1896." One 1900 directory, also at the Internet Archive, gives 1895 instead. Every other listing we've found says 1896.

1904. Ayer's American Newspaper Annual, in the University of North Texas Libraries' copy, lists two Thursday weeklies in Chatsworth: the Banner, with a circulation of 500, and George J. Blyth's Chatsworth News, founded in 1885, with 1,100.

1907. Ayer's 1907 edition carries the Banner one last time, still under Nelson Bros. McKim's 1907 directory already leaves it out.

1908 and after. From the 1908 Ayer annual on, only the News is listed. The Banner disappears from the directories after 1907. We don't know why.

1927. The name came back. According to the Archives of Ontario's microfilm N 196 and William H. Cooper's 1969 history of the Markdale Standard, G.W. Collins revived the Banner on May 6, 1927. It moved to Markdale on June 3. From June 16 it was printed as pages 3 and 4 of the Standard, and it ran on its own again from Dec. 22, 1927. The last issue on film is dated Jan. 9, 1929.

The revived Banner's front page of May 13, 1927, in the Our Ontario scans, names Collins as editor and A. E. Colgan and Son of the Markdale Standard as publishers. "It is our aim to give the people of Chatsworth and vicinity the best paper possible," it told readers, offering the paper to the end of 1927 for $1.00. On the same page, the Banner reprinted the Dundalk Herald's note that the Chatsworth News had "ceased publication seven or eight years ago."

Your turn: Is there an old copy of the Chatsworth Banner or the Chatsworth News in your attic or scrapbook? Do you have family stories about either paper? Email news@chatsworthbanner.ca.