About Mobile daily commercial register and patriot. [volume] (Mobile, Ala.) 1834-1841
Mobile, Ala. (1834-1841)

Mobile Daily Commercial Register and Patriot and Mobile Register and Journal

French colonists established the Gulf Coast settlement of Mobile as the capital of French Louisiana in 1702. After existing under French, British, and Spanish control, the city became part of the United States' Mississippi territory in 1813. That year saw the launch of its first major newspaper, the Mobile Gazette.

Alabama became a state in 1819. The Mobile Commercial Register, founded in 1821, took over the Gazette in 1822. As Alabama's only saltwater port, the city along the Mobile Rivergrew quickly as a center of commercial activity. By 1840, Mobile was one of the major southern ports for the shipment of cotton. Among the many northerners to launch new business ventures in Alabama was Thaddeus Sanford, who moved to Mobile in 1822 from New York and would become an area Democratic leader, supporting slavery but not secession. In 1828, Sanford purchased the Commercial Register.

Under Sanford, the Commercial Register absorbed The Mobile Patriot to form the Mobile Daily Commercial Register and Patriot. This new paper published its first issue on October 8, 1832, running daily for eight winter months and triweekly during four summer months. Sanford sold the Daily Commercial Register and Patriot in 1837 to Epapheas Kibby and John Forsyth, Jr., another prominent Democratic citizen. An 1839 outbreak of yellow fever in Mobile took its toll on the Register staff, reducing the frequency of publication; Kibby died of the disease.

By late spring, 1841, a typical issue of the four-page Daily Commercial Register and Patriot was primarily made up of advertisements, commodity prices, real estate announcements, lists of ships carrying cargo, and similar information, with some news, letters, and editorial commentary on page 2. Page 3 included "runaway" notices about enslaved people who had escaped. One of the Register's page 2 items (August 6, 1841) summarized an article printed in the Boston Courier about a court case involving a girl named Rose whom abolitionists were trying to free. When Rose decided to return with her owner to Mobile—and slavery—to be near her family, the Register noted this as "a spectacle of triumph of natural affection over the deep, instinctive impulses of freedom."

Sanford and S. F. Wilson regained control of the Daily Commercial Register and Patriot in late 1841. In December, Sanford acquired the Merchants and Planters Journal and merged it with the Daily Commercial Register and Patriot to form the Mobile Register and Journal. His new paper continued the same basic format as its predecessor, with editorial and news content on page 2—where the Democratic Register would often criticize its Whig rival, the Mobile Daily Advertiser.

"Journal" was dropped from the title in December 1849, and the newspaper continued as The Mobile Daily Register. Forsyth bought it once again in 1854 and remained associated with the paper until his death in 1877. After a string of buyouts (including the acquisition of the Mobile Advertiser, in 1861), the newspaper began publication as a weekend edition under the name Mobile Press-Register in 1932 and continues under this name today.

Provided by: University of Alabama Libraries, Tuscaloosa, AL