Grand Gulf Advertiser Archive

Established in 1828, Grand Gulf was located bankside near a dangerous whirlpool below the confluence of the Big Black and Mississippi Rivers in southwestern Mississippi. During its heyday in the 1830s and 40s, the town was the third largest commercial center in the state, eclipsing its neighbor and Claiborne County seat, Port Gibson, and Mississippi's second largest cotton shipping port. However, after a series of disasters in the 1850s culminating in the erosion of a significant portion of the town due to a course shift in the Mississippi River, the population of Grand Gulf had declined significantly by the outbreak of the Civil War.

William M. Smyth established the town's first newspaper, the Grand Gulf Advertiser, in 1834 as a four-page weekly. In 1836, the publishers, who by this time included two of Smyth's brothers plus J.M. Martin, announced that they would either increase the physical size of the paper or publish it biweekly. Thereafter, it was published twice a week for six months out of the year and weekly for the other six; the paper was alternately known as the Semiweekly Grand Gulf Advertiser. Also in 1836, the Advertiser boasted that new mail arrangements would enable the newspaper to "...get possession of the latest intelligence at an earlier date than most of the presses in this state." The last known issue of the succeeding title, the Weekly Grand Gulf Advertiser, appeared on December 20, 1839.

Content and coverage in the Grand Gulf Advertiser reflected the concerns of a Southern cotton-growing region and major river port during the 1830s. True to the publishers' intent to "refrain from making it a partisan journal," the political affiliation of the newspaper was not obvious. Announcements of candidates for political office included both Whig and Democratic Republican tickets. Much of the content was geared toward cotton growers, with reports on the weather, river levels, runaway slaves, and steamboat activity and advertisements for cotton factors and plantation supplies. A notice in the August 7, 1839 issue reported on the first five bales of cotton produced that year, one of which sold for $91.80. A reprint on the effects of the national banking crisis on Mississippi's cotton trade with England appeared in the same issue. The Advertiser occasionally carried marriage and death announcements, and legal notices.