Georgia Historic Newspapers

Edwin R. Sharpe and W. H. Meigs published the first issue of the Carroll County Times on January 5, 1872, in Carrollton, Georgia. Sharpe established the paper after noting the county’s potential for industrial growth, and the paper’s first issue pre-dated Carrollton’s first brick store building. The Times was a Democratic weekly and published every Friday. Sharpe’s paper quickly became the county’s legal organ, which is a role the Times held into the mid-20th century. Meigs left the paper in 1875, making Sharpe sole editor and proprietor. In 1882, Sharpe sold out to C. A. Upshaw and left the Times to pursue other interests. Sharpe was not gone long, however, as he founded the Carroll Free Press in 1883 in response to local interest. J. B. Beall operated the Carroll County Times by 1883 and received praise from Sharpe for his management of the Times. Although the Free Press was decidedly more Populist than the Times, both papers supported the Democratic Party in Georgia. The Times remained Carrollton’s official legal organ, but both the town’s newspapers often carried similar legal advertisements. Beall sold the Times to A. B. Fitts in 1887, and Fitts managed the paper for nearly ten years. The Fitts experimented with publishing the Times on a semi-weekly schedule in 1890, but returned to weekly publishing by 1893. For a single year, Thomas A. Majors owned the paper, but left to found his own populist newspaper in the same city. In 1900, J. J. Thomasson took ownership of the Times and became the newspaper’s longest-running owner. Thomasson edited the paper for over 20 years, founded the Times Publishing Company in the 1920s, and greatly expanded the Times’ in both scope and circulation. In 1943, after five decades under separate companies, the Carroll County Times and Carroll Free Press were brought under combined ownership, and eventually became the Times-Free Press in 1948. In 1980, the Times-Free Press merged with the Carroll county Georgian to form the city’s current paper and legal organ, the Times-Georgian.

Provided by: Digital Library of Georgia