The Chesterfield Advertiser Archive

The weekly Chesterfield Advertiser delivered the news to the residents of Chesterfield, the seat of Chesterfield County, South Carolina, for over a hundred years. In 1884, the year of the Advertiser's founding, Chesterfield County was poor and rural. Its economy depended wholly on small-scale farming and lumbering. As the railroads extended their reach, however, towns like Jefferson, Ruby, and Pageland (incorporated in 1901, 1903, and 1908, respectively) began to sprout up. The town of McBee became famous for its peaches; Pageland declared itself the "watermelon capital of the world."

The Chesterfield Advertiser began as the Cheraw-Bennettsville Sun and Monitor, which was the product of a merger between the Cheraw Carolina Sun and the Bennettsville Marlboro Monitor. In December 1884, Ethelred Jasper Kennedy and Archibald Hursey purchased the Sun and Monitor and changed its name to the Chesterfield Advertiser. By 1887, Daniel M. Barentine and Charles Lucius Laudie had assumed the roles of editor and publisher. The Reverend Ferris Middleton Cannon, minister to the Bay Springs Baptist Church in Chesterfield,served as editor for several years sometime thereafter. For much of the 20th century, Lam Boykin Britton, his brother Chevis Steven Britton, and Chevis Britton's wife, Lurline Virginia Britton, carried on the responsibilities of running the newspaper.

Several of the men who edited and published the Chesterfield Advertiser were community leaders. Ethelred Kennedy served as chairman of the Chesterfield County Democratic Party, incorporator of the Chesterfield Telephone and Telegraph Company, trustee of Furman University (a private school in Greenville, South Carolina), and South Carolina state senator (1886-87 and 1889). Daniel Barentine served as auditor, probate judge, and clerk of the board of county commissioners for Chesterfield County. Geoffrey Julian Redfearn served as clerk of the court of common pleas and general sessions for Chesterfield County (1892-1901), secretary and treasurer of the Chesterfield Banking and Mercantile Company (1898-99), and president of the Chesterfield and Lancaster Railroad Company.

In 1978, the Chesterfield Advertiser was merged with the Pageland Journal and became the Chesterfield Advertiser-Journal. The merger proved short-lived, and by the fall of 1980, the Chesterfield Advertiser had resumed publication under its old name. The Advertiser was officially discontinued in 1990, but in recent decades it has experienced a revival, being jointly published with the Cheraw Chronicle as the Cheraw Chronicle & the Chesterfield Advertiser.