When a young attorney published the first edition of the Aroostook Republican on Jan. 14, 1880, Caribou citizens may have questioned their newspaper’s chance of success. After all, they may have reasoned, the town’s first newspaper survived just two years before being bought out by Presque Isle investors and moved across the town line.
As the years passed, however, it became clear that Samuel W. Mathews was indeed sincere in his efforts to establish a weekly newspaper in Caribou. Soon the memory of the North Star and its brief two-year stay faded and the Republican quickly gained public confidence and patronage.
Some 133 years and nine owners later, the Republican continues as a weekly newspaper committed to the people and news of Caribou and its surrounding communities.
Mathews, a lawyer from Hampden, visited Caribou in 1879 and decided the town of about 2,750 residents needed its own weekly newspaper. He was reportedly so impressed with the town and its people, that he abandoned his plans to practice law, moved his wife and two daughters to Caribou, and launched the Aroostook Republican in January of 1880.
The newspaperman, after editing and publishing the Republican for seven years, was tapped for the position of Maine’s first labor commissioner. Mathews accepted the offer, relocated to Augusta, and sold the newspaper to his son-in-law, Alfred Winslow Hall.
Hall, who married Mathews’ daughter Mae, assumed ownership of the Republican on May 11, 1887. He would continue as its editor and publisher for 15 years before “a feeling of weariness” prompted him to retire.
Hall sold the Caribou paper to a local firm — Porter and Leonard, who became publishers from Sept. 1, 1899 to Sept. 29, 1900. Hall, in an Oct. 4, 1900 editorial, informed readers that he had repurchased the Republican from Porter and Leonard.
“With this issue the Republican again changes hands and passes control to its former editor and proprietor,” Hall wrote in the Oct. 4 edition.
In an open letter to readers on Feb. 13, 1902, Hall offered a final farewell. “I sever my connection with the paper,” he wrote, “having sold the same to Mr. Lyman J. Pendell of Presque Isle.
Pendell, a former correspondent for the Bangor News, left his position as assistant editor of the Star-Herald to accept the new challenge. He reportedly began building up the newspaper immediately and boasted some 50 area news correspondents, who he liked to gather together in the Grange Hall once a year to discuss problems and improvements for the paper.
Under Pendell’s direction, the Republican grew from four pages in 1880 to eight pages in the early 1900s. Advertising, rather than news, apparently consumed a majority of the space.
The newspaper’s circulation was pegged at 1,950 copies in March of 1907, at a time when the town’s population totaled about 5,000.
Caribou’s weekly newspaper was sold again in 1927, when ownership transferred to the Caribou Publishing Company. The new owners included Gen. George M. Carter, high school principal John A. Partridge and local merchant Charles T. Bishop.
The new firm continued the previous owner’s commitment to the newspaper until, on Jan. 7, 1943, citizens read the headline, “Aroostook Republican sold to new Caribou group.”
The newest Republican owners were: S.W. Collins, president of the Aroostook Trust Co. and the S.W. Collins Co.; Michael Corey, restaurant owner; Walter T. Day, proprietor of the Vaughn House; Dr. Fredrick L. Gregory; Elmer J. Johnston, jeweler; Elizabeth Kirkpatrick, manager of Aroostook County Federal Savings and Loan Association; Dr. Nathan S. Lowery; David Solman, attorney; Charles A. Stetson, insurance agent; Beecher Swain, manager of Caribou Light and Power Co.; C. Robert Taylor, Republican editor and manager; and Emily Tibbetts, proprietor of S.F. Tibbetts Co.
Just four years later the group sold the Republican to a Florida publisher, who would own the weekly for nearly 20 years before selling to the current owner, Northeast Publishing Company, a subsidiary of the Bangor Publishing Company.
Today the paper is produced by reporters Natalie Bazinet, Lisa Wilcox and Kevin Sjoberg, advertising representative Gayle Jackson, and receptionist Lisa Anderson. The Republican is edited by Mark Putnam, managing editor for Northeast Publishing Co.
