The Weekly Floridian Archive

The Weekly Floridian (Tallahassee, FL) began publication on September 28, 1828 under the direction of William Wilson as The Floridian. During this time, The Floridian was one of only four papers in print in the area. The newspaper changed titles and owners several times during its publication history: the Southern Journal (1846-1849), the Floridian and Journal (1849-1865), the Semi-weekly Floridian (1865-1867), finally becoming the Weekly Floridian (1867-19??). In its various iterations the Floridian, in an age of ultra-partisanship, was decidedly Democratic. As the Floridian and Journal, it was among a small number of newspapers that continued to operate during the Civil War, although very few issues survived from those years.

One of its more prominent owners, Charles E Dyke, bought interest in the paper in 1847 while working as a printer in the newspaper office. Dyke sold shares to several partners over the years and eventually sold the paper to Dorr & Bowen in 1883. Later that year, Bowen became sole proprietor after Dorr retired.

The paper prided itself on being "a faithful worker in the interests of Florida" that would "inform and instruct the masses." Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, it reported local, statewide, and national news. It included extensive coverage of politics, especially the 1880 presidential election, reprinted news from other national newspapers, and published Supreme Court decisions. The Floridian contained numerous advertisements for both local and national brands of the time, reported on railroad developments and advances in farming and agriculture. It also covered the cigar industry and immigration. Other features of the paper included notices for land sales and a "personal" section about local goings on.

Tallahassee, founded in 1824 in Leon County, Florida, is the state capital. The territorial government of Florida specifically called for the creation of the city as a new capital so that the legislature and governor could be located approximately mid-way between the major population centers of Pensacola in the Panhandle and St. Augustine/Jacksonville on the Atlantic Coast. The capitol building, now known as the "old Capitol", opened in 1845, the same year Florida became a state. In the antebellum era, the town flourished as the center of the region's cotton-based slave holding economy.

In 1834, the Tallahassee Railroad Company was chartered by Florida's territorial legislature. The line was the third-oldest railroad in the US. Operational by 1837, merchants shipped cotton along the twenty-two-mile route to St. Marks and out to the Gulf of Mexico. These mule-drawn lines on wooden rails were replaced with steel rails and steam trains in 1856. In the 1840s, the Great Florida Mail route was established, connecting the city via steamboat and stagecoaches to Apalachicola, Pensacola, and Mobile, Alabama on the west and St. Augustine, Brunswick, Georgia and Charleston, South Carolina on the east.

During the antebellum period, slave-based cotton and tobacco plantations continued to flourish contributing to the population growth of Tallahassee, making it the most populated region in the state at the time. Tallahassee was the only Confederate state capital east of Mississippi that was not captured by the Union. When Florida seceded from the Union in 1861, there were more slaves in Leon County than any other county in the state.

In the post-war years, economic focus in the area shifted initially to cotton and tobacco and later to citrus, cattle ranching, timber, naval stores, and tourism. Efforts at Reconstruction, and especially the distribution of land to freed slaves, faltered in the late 1860s and ended altogether in the 1870s.

Institutions of higher education were introduced in the city in the mid-1800s. In 1857, Tallahassee welcomed its first institution for higher education, the West Florida Seminary. In later years, the site also hosted Florida State College for Women, which became Florida State University in 1947. The State Normal College for Colored Students opened in 1887, offering classes to African Americans. It was established as a land grant university in 1891 and changed its name to the State Normal and Industrial College for Colored Students. It is now known as the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), the state's largest, and only public, historically black institution of higher education.