County Seat Newspaper
of Clare County

Marking 140 Years in Print

Posted

You may or may not have noticed the Volume and Issue number on the front page this week. Volume 140 means the Cleaver has been in business for 140 years. The issue number is the first edition published in the volume year.

We are so excited to reach the milestone of 140 years in business. This is an honor many small newspapers haven’t been able to reach. I’ve had many people comment sadly how they had lost their small-town newspaper. We seem to be constantly flooded by information from social media, regional and national news outlets, email, and other electronic sources. Yet, nothing can replace a reporter attending a meeting and informing citizens what took place, local obituaries, history, and the ability to watch children and young adults achieve great things with their community’s support. The Cleaver will have fulfilled that role for 140 years in July of 2021.

The Cleaver is named so presumably because it started in the back office of the butcher shop on Main Street in Harrison. In my imagination it was a bit of lark that the Cleaver would last. Businesses were coming and going fast and furiously in a boom lumber town built almost overnight. In 1881 Harrison was less than a year old and newly named the county seat when the Cleaver started printing. It was another 10 years before the Village of Harrison was incorporated as the City of Harrison.

When I look into the archives of the Cleaver I’m touched by the record of life, death, joy and sorrow contained there. Our service men and women write home, live, return triumphant and sometimes perish to a community’s shock.

It may seem a newspaper is here today and recycled tomorrow but often we are asked to look up births, deaths, a story about a dog, legal notices, businesses in and out of operation, and many other community changes. The record of Clare County is all there.

Less than a handful of families have owned the Cleaver since 1881. After the rise and fall of the lumber era where the Cleaver changed hands between the Quinns and two generations of the Canfields, the Allen family owned it beginning in the 1890s and the Bucholz family bought it in 1937. It was in the Bucholz family until 2017 when I took over.

A family business becomes intimately ingrained in everyone it touches. The cadence of the days of the week, month and year shape around press day, paper day and all the other days in which the business may demand attention over family life.

In July we will publish a special commemorative issue of the Cleaver. It is our hope that COVID-19 will be under control so we may plan other celebrations together to honor the Cleaver.

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