Publication planned for 1889 edition

The Alleghany Historical and Genealogical Society will be republishing the inaugural edition of The Alleghany Star, the forerunner to The Alleghany News, as a fund-raiser for the county's sesquicentennial celebration planned for 2009.

The county will celebrate its 150th anniversary next year, which will mark the newspaper's 120th anniversary. The first edition of the Star, which consolidated with The Alleghany Times to become the Star-Times on Sept. 2, 1941, was published on Aug. 15, 1889. The newspaper was later named The Alleghany News. The special reprint is being done with the approval of The Alleghany News.

That first newspaper included a history of Alleghany County that filled most of the front page, along with a poem about "The Trials of a Twin" and a story about "How to Kill a Town" that urges people to shop locally that was reprinted from the Wilkesboro Chronicle.

Jeff Halsey, president of the Historical Society and a Main Street business owner, noted with a laugh, "They apparently were facing many of the same problems in 1889 that we are facing today. Many times we think that people going out of town to shop is a new phenomenon."

In speaking of the content of that first edition, Halsey noted that it is being reprinted in its entirety exactly as it was originally printed in 1889. Some of the stories contain information that today would be considered racially insensitive. "It was a different time and the culture, thankfully, has changed greatly since then," said Halsey.

He said that the reprint will include 8 pages, twice as many as the original.

 

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