MOULTRIE — Some 118 years ago, a fellow by the name of W.H. Cooper thought Moultrie and Colquitt County should have a newspaper. In 1894, The Moultrie Observer was born.

The first edition was only four pages and on Page 2 of that March 15 effort, he expressed his hopes and dreams in his very first editorial.

“With this issue begins the life of The Moultrie Observer. As a salutatory we only wish to say that we shall struggle to make this publication worthy of the praise and confidence of the citizens of Colquitt County,” he proclaimed.

And since then, The Observer grew from a weekly to a daily systematically embracing innovations in printing that ran the spectrum from hot type to offset to computer pagination.

“I’ve been privileged to have been a part of those many transitions,” said Observer Editor and Publisher Dwain Walden.

Walden recalls banging out news stories on an old Underwood manual typewriter and getting into the office at 5 a.m. to begin untangling a mountain of teletype tape. Now he sits at an old oak desk that he reclaimed from the junk pile that dated back to those beginning days. But instead of a typewriter, two computers stand in stark contrast to that old desk.

Back on that first day, Cooper and his partner M. Mayers were no doubt filled with excitement and optimism as they began their new venture. And it’s obvious from Cooper’s first editorial that their sights were clearly set on the future of their community and their new business.  And even though they may have been excited, it’s likely they had little idea that more than a century later the seed they planted would have become such an active player in the growth and development of Moultrie and Colquitt County.

Certainly they had no idea that one day the news of the day would be typed on a computer and with the push of a key be transmitted to a print site 45 miles away. Or that events happening on the other side of the world would be transmitted in seconds to those same computers, and that darkrooms would no longer exist, giving way to digital cameras that transport photos from a news scene to the layout page in a matter of minutes.

Nor — a century before the internet — could they have imagined that The Observer’s website would see 700,000 page views per month.

The Observer, situated on North Main Street since 1911, has been a champion of open government, has led numerous campaigns of growth and development and has won numerous awards  — state and national — for its dedication to the basic concepts of a free press.

Now owned by Community Newspapers Holdings Inc. — cnhi — the newspaper has previously been owned include Multimedia, Gannett and Thomson newspapers. For many years prior to chain newspaper ownership, The Observer was owned by C.B. “Bert” Allen who bought the newspaper two years after its inception. After his death in 1949, his family continued to operate the company until it was sold to Multimedia.

Cooper was only 20 years old when he launched his enterprise. At the time, he was the youngest editor in the state.

And Moultrie might have been an unlikely place to have a newspaper in 1894. There were only 700 residents and a handful of businesses in an area that was little more than a wilderness at that time.

But times were changing in Colquitt County in 1894. Just 13 months earlier, the first train — the Boston & Albany, which the next year became the Georgia Northern Railroad — had pulled into Moultrie, opening the territory to great naval stores and lumber operations.

New settlers began moving in, and the little town of Moultrie seemed to be on the verge of great prosperity.

Although a small sheet called The Moultrie Banner was being printed in town, Cooper had a vision for a newspaper to better serve a growing community. When he sat down to write his first editorial, he shared that vision with his new readers.

Then, the young editor defined his newspaper’s editorial role as the defender of people’s rights, a policy the newspaper continues to follow more than a century later.

“It shall be The Observer’s policy to defend the landmarks of the people’s rights,” he wrote. “The landmarks of liberty planted by our fathers, blessed by our mothers and marked and made sacred by patriot blood; the landmarks of religious freedom; the landmarks of public and private morality, these the Moultrie Observer shall struggle to defend.”

Cooper said the newspaper’s policy would be to “praise what is beneficial and condemn what is harmful whether in county, state or national matters.”

In conclusion, Cooper wrote: “We have not the foresight of a prophet; nor the wisdom of an oracle, nor the virtue and faultlessness of an angel; but we shall strive to champion the best men and not set down ought in malice against any one.”

So, with a four-page paper that contained Cooper’s editorial, a few ads and assorted items of state and local interest, Vol. 1, No. 1 of The Moultrie Observer went to press.

For the next couple of weeks, The Observer reported on its growth and sought to build a following.

“Rev. E.H. Bryan claims the honor of being the first man to pay his subscription for the Observer,” a brief item reported in the second edition.

“When you advertise your business, you advertise your town as a live town,” according to an item in the local column.

As in most ventures, starting a newspaper carried some risks, and soon after forming The Observer, Cooper wrote a plea to the citizens of Moultrie to support the town’s newspaper.

“The publishers and proprietors of The Observer have incurred considerable expense and have devoted much time and effort in equipping themselves for the work they have undertaken to furnish Georgia with a first-class newspaper,” Cooper wrote. “Now wide-awake progressive leaders in the march of advancement it remains for you to say whether or not this new venture shall be a success. This paper was started at the instigation of the people to whom I am writing. The publisher consulted the leading men of Moultrie and other sections of the county, and the advice almost unanimously given was to engage in this campaign.

“Acting on this advice, the venture was made and now it remains for us to see.”

In the, beginning, Cooper’s biggest advertising supporter was Spivey Bros., a local dry goods store, but he also received some advertising from M.D. Allen’s dry goods store. Cooper would use his local column to help promote his advertisers.

In one column he flatly stated that Spivey Bros. had “the best merchandise for the lowest price.”

It wasn’t long after The Observer began publication that the Moultrie Banner quit publishing. The Observer’s only reference to the Banner’s closing was a line in Cooper’s June 7, 1894, column that read:

“The Moultrie Banner has ceased to wave.”

Cooper had been in the newspaper publishing business for only a few months when the reality of his undertaking was reflected in his writing.

On June 21 he wrote:

“No one outside the newspaper office realizes the amount of work, responsibility and expense of running a paper, and the comparatively small return there from. Many times outlay in money is greater than the financial return and you therefore contribute your labor and have all the abuse and curses you get from those for whom you have labored.”

Throughout the first year of operation, the paper’s masthead identified W.H. Cooper as editor and M. Mayers as business manager. Then, in the April 4, 1895, edition, the masthead identified Cooper as editor and Mayers as foreman. The very next week Cooper was identified as editor and manager, and he continued in that capacity until he sold the newspaper to two local attorneys, Robert Shipp and Matt Pearsall. When the two attorneys took over the newspaper on Sept. 19, 1895, the masthead identified them as joint editors, and M. Mayers returned to the masthead as business manager.

Shipp and Pearsall kept the paper for only a few months, but during that time M.D. Allen’s dry good business became The Observer’s main advertiser. A few months later, the attorneys sold the paper to Allen’s brother, C.B. Allen.

C.B. Allen gave the newspaper stability and guided it through 54 successful years of operation. When he died, his wife, daughter Frances, and her husband Max Nussbaum continued the leadership until selling the newspaper to Multimedia Inc., in 1979.