The State Chronicle Archive

On September 15, 1883, Walter Hines Page (1855–1918) published the first issue of the The State Chronicle in Raleigh, North Carolina. The North Carolina native started his career working with the St. Joseph Gazette in Missouri and The New York World before moving back to run his own publication. The first issue of the State Chronicle promised "plain speaking editorials about living subjects, advocating honest democratic politics, industrial education, material development, money making and hearty living." Page styled his weekly newspaper after The New York World, printing descriptive rather than dramatic headlines on the front page and constraining nearly every article to a single column. He printed on higher grade paper than most serials of the day, thereby giving the Chronicle a distinguished appearance.

In September 1885, Page debuted a second edition of the Chronicle. The Daily Chronicle published six days a week. However, the title was short-lived and ceased publication in February 1885. The daily edition's demise roughly coincided with Page's decision to sell the money-losing Chronicle to Josephus Daniels (1862-1948). Like Page, Daniels used the newspaper to push for economic development and improved education in North Carolina. In June 1885, Daniels merged the State Chronicle with The Farmer and Mechanic to reduce competition among the two Raleigh-based newspapers.

Although he no longer owned The State Chronicle, Page, who had returned to journalism in New York, continued to contribute to its pages. In 1886, the newspaper published four letters from Page arguing that the Confederate veterans who controlled North Carolina were like the mummies of ancient Egypt—dead remnants of a past generation who kept the state from progressing. Though these "Mummy Letters" criticized the glorification of the failed Confederacy, the State Chronicle also published editorials promoting white supremacist ideals associated with the Confederacy.

In March 1890, Daniels launched The Daily State Chronicle, which he published six days a week while continuing to issue a weekly edition under the State Chronicle title. Shortly after launch of the daily edition, the Chronicle leased its own telegraph wire, which allowed both editions to include stories provided by the United Press. The State Chronicle boasted on June 2, 1891 that it was the first newspaper in the state with a dedicated telegraph wire.

With both editions of the Chronicle losing money, Daniels, who was becoming active in the North Carolina and national Democratic Party, sold the newspapers to Thomas R. Jernigan (1847–1920), an editor for The News & Observer in March 1892. In April 1893, Jernigan sold the Chronicle to his former employer, Samuel Ashe (1840-1938), editor and publisher of the News & Observer. The sale effectively merged the two newspapers, and they were published together, for a time, as the News-Observer-Chronicle beginning in July 1893.