furnished, for three succeeding numbers of the Gazette, a thrilling serial.[1]
Nor was this an unusual condition, even in the east. An elderly relative of the vvrriter remembers the time when her father, once every two months, walked sixty miles along the Susquehanna River from Laceyville to Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania, to get the mail and the newspapers of the large cities.
In Illinois the development came later, and was marked by a lively interest in the Free Soil movement. The first General Assembly of Illinois convened at Kaskaskia on October 5, 1818, and John McLean of Shawneetown was the candidate for governor at the first election. In 1816 his rival, Daniel Pope Cook, who favored the Free Soil party, became part owner of the Illinois Intelligencer, the first newspaper in the territory."[2]
Other early newspapers printed in the state were in their order, the Illinois Emigrant, published by Henry Eddy and Singleton H. Kimmel at Shawneetown in 1818, its name being changed to the Illinois Gazette in 1824; the Edwardsville Spectator, by Hopper Warren in 1819; the Star of the West, at the same place in 1822, changed to the Illinois Republican in 1823; the Republican Advocate at Kaskaskia in 1823, by R. K. Fleming; the Illinois Journal at Galena, by James Jones in 1826; the Sangamon Spectator at Springfield, the same year, by Hopper Warren; the Illinois Corrector at Edwardsville in 1828; the Galena Advertiser by Newell, Philleo & Co., in 1829; the Alton Spectator in 1830, by Edward Breath; the Telegraph at the same place, by Parks and Treadway, afterwards controlled by John Bailhache, and still a leading paper in Madison County; the Sangamon Journal, now
