DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it to you straight. Way back in 1881, the same year Nolan County itself was organized, a man named C.E. Gilbert set up shop in Sweetwater and launched a paper called the Sweetwater Advance.
Now Gilbert was no stranger to the newspaper game. He'd already founded the Abilene Reporter, so he knew what he was doin. The Sweetwater Advance eventually got a new name, the Nolan County Review, and kept on printin.
Then in 1906, a fellow named John W. Millsapps came along and purchased the operation. Millsapps had ideas.
He modernized the whole thing. And then in 1911, Millsapps and his partner W.A. Perry, with managing editor C.A.
Wade workin alongside them, made a move that would define the paper for generations. They started publishing daily editions, and they gave it the name it still carries today: the Sweetwater Reporter. Now that name meant something.
Daily news, every day, rolling out of Sweetwater. The story doesn't stop there either. A later owner of the paper was a man named Houston Harte.
Harte went on to become a partner in a national publishing firm called Harte-Hanks. So what started as a scrappy little paper in a county that had just barely organized itself grew into something connected to a publishing operation with reach across the whole country. From the Sweetwater Advance all the way to Harte-Hanks.
Not bad for a town that was just findin its legs in 1881.
What the marker says
C.E. Gilbert, who founded the "Abilene Reporter", established the "Sweetwater Advance" in 1881, the year Nolan County was organized. Later published as the "Nolan County Review", it was purchased in 1906 by John W. Millsapps, who modernized the operation. In 1911 Millsapps, and his partner W.A. Perry, with the assistance of managing editor C.A. Wade, began publishing daily editions under the "Sweetwater Reporter" banner. A later owner of the newspaper was Houston Harte, who became a partner in the national publishing firm of Harte-Hanks. (1981)