About

Richard W. Grubb published the first issue of the Darien Timber Gazette on April 25, 1874 in Darien, Georgia. In the advertisements leading up to the first issue of his paper, Grubb noted that the Gazette would focus on local matters and, true to its masthead, “pay particular attention to the yellow pine interests.” The Gazette was Darien’s first newspaper since the McIntosh County Herald, and Darien Commercial Register ceased printing in the 1840s, and the paper was made financially possible by the reviving timber industry in the 1870s in Darien. For most of the Gazette’s lifetime, the paper circulated on Saturdays at a subscription cost of two and a half dollars per year. The paper politically aligned with the Democratic Party, but Grubb limited the paper’s partisanship leanings, instead choosing to focus on Darien news and the local timber market reports. The newspaper, although frequently cited by other Georgia papers, never achieved a circulation surpassing 500. “Timber” was dropped from the title in 1893, and the paper’s masthead read as the Darien Gazette with the April 29, 1893 issue. Grubb, who founded the Gazette at the age of twenty-two, was the paper’s only owner during its forty-four year run. The last issue of the Darien Gazette published on August 3, 1918, because illness forced Grubb to suspend operations. On August 22, 1918, Richard W. Grubb died in Savannah, Georgia, and the Gazette never resumed printing. Darien, Georgia, did not have a legal organ again until 1920 when the McIntosh County Herald returned.