The Asheville Citizen originated as the North Carolina Citizen in 1870, a weekly newspaper serving Asheville and western North Carolina. Randolph Abbott Shotwell (1844–1885), who led a regiment of sharpshooters during Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg and a veteran of daily and weekly editions of the Weekly Journal of Commerce of New Bern, N.C. and the Western Vindicator of Rutherfordton, N.C., started the newspaper. His tenure with the Citizen was short-lived. In 1871, he was charged and convicted of participating in the Ku Klux Klan and sentenced to serve time in prison.
Nathaniel Lafayette “Natt” Atkinson (1832–1894), a lawyer, followed Shotwell as editor and publisher of the Citizen. He sold the newspaper to Robert M. Furman in October 1872. Furman (1846–1904), a native of Louisburg, N.C. and a veteran of newspapers in Louisburg; Henderson, N.C.; Norfolk; and Raleigh, remain tied to the Citizen for the ensuing 16 years, serving as editor and sole owner or co-owner.
In 1880, Furman changed the newspaper’s name to the Asheville Citizen. On January 26, 1882, Furman and his co-editor, Jordan Stone (b. 1838?), announced the addition of John Donald Cameron (1820–1897) as an associate editor and their plans to add a semi-weekly edition of the Citizen. The semi-weekly edition continued to publish as the Asheville Citizen and was distinguished by the words Semi-Weekly Edition at the top of the first column on the first page of the issue. It was published on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The weekly edition, eventually titled the Weekly Citizen, continued to issue on Thursdays.
On April 9, 1885, the Citizen announced that it planned to cease publication of a semi-weekly edition and, instead, launch a daily edition on April 13. The editors wrote, “It has been our purpose to issue the Daily Citizen so soon as the several railroads, centering at Asheville, should approach completion; and now that we are ‘in sight’ ofthis grand result, so long hoped and worked for by us, we deem the time propitious for such an undertaking.” A month later, in the May 6 issue of the daily edition, the editors noted, “We shall issue an early edition of the Daily every afternoon, in order to place the paper the same evening along the line of the railroad from here to Salisbury.” They boasted that such a schedule would place the “noon dispatches” in the hands of readers “sooner than any other paper in the State.” Initially, readers of the daily edition received a newspaper every day but Sunday. By October 25, 1885, the Citizen had switched to publishing on Sunday but not on Monday. Both the daily and weekly editions were four pages with a seven-column layout.
Rather than serving as a vehicle for political debates, the Citizen of the 1880s and 1890s served commerce. It touted the beauty and economic opportunities available in the mountains of western North Carolina. It alsoincluded notices about court activity, legislative maneuvers, elections, and public figures, but the editorials did not favor any party. For example, in 1885 the paper regularly, often daily, carried brief notices about the health of Ulysses Grant. News outside western North Carolina came to the paper via the Associated Press, often summarized as “News in a Nutshell: Collated and Condensed for Casual Consideration.”
On January 3, 1889, the Tobacco Plant of Durham, N.C. reported that the Citizen had changed hands and was owned by a group of investors incorporated as the Citizen Publishing Company. The investors included Thomas Walton Patton (1841–1907), who served as mayor of Asheville from 1893 through 1894. Patton was the grandson of James Patton, one of Asheville’s founders. The newspaper’s new owners continued to publish daily and weekly editions under such titles as the Daily Citizen, the Asheville Daily Citizen, and the Asheville Weekly Citizen. From 1900 to 1911 they also published the Semi-Weekly Citizen. The weekly edition ceased publication on March 14, 1917.
The evolution from the Asheville Citizen to the modern-day Asheville Citizen-Times is complex, but not atypical. The Asheville Daily Gazette, founded in 1896, merged with the Asheville Evening News, eventually changing its name to the Asheville Times. Beginning in 1930, the Citizen served morning readers, and the Times served an afternoon audience. The Sunday newspaper, which served readers of both titles, carried the name Asheville Citizen-Times. In 1954 the Greenville, S.C. News-Piedmont Company purchased the Asheville newspapers. The Asheville Times folded in 1991, and the newspaper, which served a morning readership, became the Asheville Citizen-Times.
Provided by: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library, Chapel Hill, NC
