About Randolph enterprise. [volume] (Beverly, W. Va.) 1874-1956
Beverly, W. Va. (1874-1956)

The Randolph Enterprise

Published in Beverly, the original seat of Randolph County, West Virginia from its inception in 1874 until 1900, and then in the new seat of Elkins thereafter, the Randolph Enterprise was a Democratic Party-aligned weekly newspaper "[d]evoted to the Best Interests of Randolph and Adjacent Counties and the Development of West Virginia." Though initially consisting of four pages, by 1903 that number had doubled to eight. While most often released on Thursdays throughout its run, there were occasional periods when the Enterprise hit shelves on Wednesdays or Fridays instead. Though charging readers a $2.00 per year subscription fee during the 1880s, by the 1890s, the paper's yearly cost came down to only a dollar, a relatively common price for papers in the state at the time.

Columns in the Enterprise included: local news items headed under "Within the Borders of West Virginia," national news featuring letters from a correspondent in Washington, D.C., a county business directory, political candidacy announcements, and a widely-syndicated piece of writing from the Reverend Doctor Thomas De Witt Talmage. Across the entirety of its run, the Enterprise's reporting was reprinted in papers throughout the Northern and Eastern Panhandles and North Central region of the state, in both ideologically-allied publications like the Wheeling Register, West Virginia Argus, and Weston Democrat, as well as Republican, sometime-rivals such as the Wheeling Intelligencer, Fairmont West Virginian, and Martinsburg Independent. In 1896, the Enterprise ensured that its readers knew immediately upon examining it which side of the political divide it fell, as it made its slogan "Democracy, the Hope of the Nation."

Given its long history, it should perhaps come as no surprise that the Enterprise had a slew of editors at its helm throughout the years. Early on, V.B. Trimble was listed as "Editor and Proprietor." Later editors included Omar Conrad and J. Ed. Kildow. Notably, only three months after the paper's move to Elkins, then-editor C.P. Darlington shot and seriously wounded Woodford Hutton (whose ancestor was the namesake of nearby town, Huttonsville) over a political dispute. The Bryanite Democrat Darlington was for free silver, the Republican Hutton against it. By 1903, C.L. Weymouth was in charge; some years later, in the 1910s, he would briefly own and edit the Belington Progressive. The Enterprise's editor during the 1910s, J. Slidell Brown, former longtime editor of the Kingwood's West Virginia Argus, survived a train accident in 1918. Apparently, his injuries were minimal enough that he was able to shortly thereafter continue at his position. Still another editor, James Weir, was elected to the state House of Delegates by 1908 and appointed to a "good roads commission" by the governor. Thus, it is perhaps indicative of the abilities of long-time business manager Ralph E. Smouse that the paper was able to remain afloat in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

And though Weir would be characterized as "foaming and frothing" in a Fairmont West Virginian column republished by Charleston's African American paper The Advocate in 1909, he nevertheless served as a secretary for West Virginia's Democratic U.S. Senator Clarence W. Watson. Moreover, Weir would go on to start his own paper in Elkins, the Randolph Review in 1913. The Enterprise would continue until 1956, at which time it merged with the Review to form the Randolph Enterprise-Review. This final iteration ceased publication in 1984.

Provided by: West Virginia University