About

Florence, Georgia, was newly incorporated as a town on December 14, 1837 to replace the burned town of Roanoke as a shipping point on the Chattahoochee River. Benjamin Gardner and Harmon H. Barrow published the inaugural issue of Florence’s first newspaper, the Georgia Mirror, on April 2, 1838. Politically, the paper aligned with the States’ Rights Party and opposed the presidency of Martin Van Buren. The editors of the Mirror and Augusta’s People’s Press editorially sparred with one another in August of 1838 after the Mirror editors accused the editor of the People’s Press of being a “Van Buren man.” The editors chose to drop “Georgia” from the paper’s masthead for its second volume in April, 1839, and the newspaper printed as the Mirror for the rest of its run. Barrow left the paper in 1839, and J. L. Bull purchased interest in the Mirror in May of that same year. The last issue of the Mirror circulated on April 11, 1840, when Gardner left to join the Columbus Enquirer. The Southern Recorder announced on April 17, 1840, that the Mirror discontinued publication and its subscription list merged with the Columbus Enquirer.