Cheraw Gazette Archive

Southern historian Ulrich Bonnell Phillips once called the weekly Cheraw Gazette (1835-61) the "chief newspaper of the Pee Dee region." Its historical importance belied Cheraw's primary role in the economy in northeastern South Carolina. Located on the Great Pee Dee River in present-day Chesterfield County, South Carolina, Cheraw served as a center for shipping and trading crops and livestock. During the antebellum period, 20,000 bales of cotton were shipped through Cheraw every year. Telegraph posts were built between Cheraw and Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1847. The first railroad line reached Cheraw in the 1850s.

Murdoch McLean, a practicing physician, established the Cheraw Gazette on November 17, 1835. On November 21, 1838, McLean changed the name to the Cheraw Gazette and Pee Dee Farmer, ostensibly to appeal to farmers in the region. A year later, McLean made an even more explicit appeal, changing the name to the Farmer's Gazette and Cheraw Advertiser. In the prospectus, published in the Camden (South Carolina) Journal, on December 28, 1839, McLean summarized his intentions thusly: "The editor of the Cheraw Gazette has determined, at the suggestion of the Pee Dee Agricultural Society, to devote more space than formerly to agriculture, and matters pertaining specially to its interests."

In the spring of 1843, John Stubs purchased the Farmers' Gazette and Cheraw Advertiser and retitled it the Farmers' Gazette, dedicated to the "promulgation and advancement of correct opinions and practices in agriculture and politics." Sometime around 1847, James Powell acquired the Farmer's Gazette and changed the name back to the Cheraw Gazette. When the Civil War began in 1861, Powell was forced to suspend publication; it is generally held that the Gazette ceased that same year. The latest available issue is dated August 24, 1859.