About

Harmony Grove (later known as Commerce) was incorporated in 1884. N. S. Alexander founded the town’s first newspaper and legal organ in the late 1880s as the Harmony Grove Age. Working as both editor and publisher, Alexander published the paper for about two years before selling the publication to Dr. W. B. Hardman in 1891. Hardman organized the paper under the Hardman-Shankle company and changed the masthead to the Harmony Grove Echo in 1893. By 1894, the paper was edited and published by the Echo Publishing Company. On February 15, 1897, Hardman purchased the Banks County Gazette and published the Echo as the Harmony Grove Echo-Gazette until April of that same year when the Gazette returned to Homer, Georgia. Beginning in 1894, Hardman leased the Echo to John M. Carson for roughly a year, but Hardman stayed on as a manager until 1895 when he sold the newspaper in total to John F. Shannon. Shannon remained owner and editor of the Echo (later the Commerce News) until his death in 1934. The Commerce News became the new masthead of the Harmony Grove Echo following Harmony Grove’s reincorporation as the town of Commerce in 1903. The people of Harmony Grove felt the new name better reflected their commercial role in the North Georgia cotton trade and also wished to solve an issue where mail was going to a town of the same name in Dawson County. The paper was Democratic, published every Thursday for one dollar per annum, and achieved a circulation of 900. John F. Shannon, owner of the Harmony Grove Echo, oversaw the name change and remained owner and editor until his death in 1934. The Commerce News continues publication today.