Bostonian James G. Edwards arrived in Jacksonville from the East with a few type fonts and a small hand press in November 1829.
“As his press had been frozen up on the journey, he could not hope to begin publication of the newspaper which he had planned,” wrote Edwards’ biographer, Philip Jordan, for a 1930 issue of the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society.
So it was not until the spring of 1830 that the first issue of the Western Observer, a newspaper dedicated to news, temperance and religion, was printed at Edwards’ shop.
“As he was the first printer to open a shop in Jacksonville, he found that, with the assistance of his wife and her sister, he had sufficient business to keep him at the press,” Jordan wrote.
Edwards printed the Western Observer through the “Winter of the Deep Snow,” 1830-31, and had the following to say in the Jan. 15, 1831, issue about that trying time:
“We are sorry the Observer does not appear more regularly. Our office not being ‘air tight,’ we were prevented from publishing last week on account of the cold.”
Edwards stopped publication of the Western Observer in July 1831, when he decided to change the focus of his newspaper. On Aug. 26, 1831, he renamed his newspaper the Illinois Patriot but stressed that it was a continuation of the Western Observer. The new paper supported the Whig Party and the majority of its news was more political than religious.
Edwards himself shed some light on his reasons for changing the Observer to the Patriot. In the Oct. 27, 1832, issue of the Patriot, he wrote: “With this number commences the second volume of the Illinois Patriot. When we undertook the responsible duty of conducting the public press in this place, our patronage, owing to the sparseness of the population, was very limited, and a dark cloud hung over our doubtful enterprise.
“Since then, the town and county have increased almost beyond a parallel. Instead of 300, there are now, probably, upwards of 1,200 inhabitants in the town, and the county has advanced in the same ratio…
“Most of our patrons are informed that the senior editor of the Patriot heretofore published a paper in this place, the character of which did not seem at that time to meet the desires of the people at large; in accordance, therefore, with the public sentiment, we remodeled our plan, which resulted in the publication of the Patriot …”
Despite Edwards’ enthusiasm concerning the Patriot’s prospects, he always seemed to be short on cash. The following item appeared in the Dec. 29, 1832, Patriot:
“Christmas and New Year’s presents, in the shape of payments by subscribers and advertisers of their dues to the Illinois Patriot, will be most thankfully received by the proprietor. Our necessities really compel us to make this request.”
For unknown reasons, Edwards decided near the end of 1837 to sell the Illinois Patriot and move to Fort Madison, then in Wisconsin Territory. At Fort Madison, Edwards bought the former printing shop of the Western Adventurer from Dr. Isaac Galland.
On March 24, 1838, Edwards printed the first issue of the Fort Madison Patriot, “before the admiring eyes of Chief Black Hawk and other Indians who frequently came to the office to inspect the mechanical part of the plant,” wrote an unknown Iowa historian.
In this first issue of the Fort Madison Patriot, Edwards gave future Iowans the nickname by which they have since been known. “If a division of the (Wisconsin) Territory is effected, we proposed that Iowans take the cognomen of ‘Hawk-eyes’; our etymology can thus be more definitely traced than that of ‘Wolverines,’ ‘Suckers,’ and ‘Hoosiers,’ and we can rescue from oblivion a memento at least of the old chief.”
In November 1838, Edwards moved to Burlington, where he founded two newspapers — the Burlington Patriot and, six months later, the Iowa Patriot.
In Burlington, Edwards devoted his time to building up his business and to fostering those intellectual, religious and moral organizations he had worked for in Jacksonville.
Edwards contracted cholera and died in 1851, but he lived long enough to see his various newspapers play a role in shaping the moral and intellectual environment of the frontier.