Submitted by Wayne Adcock

1873 - W.H. Fearing from Champion Hill Church, Near Camden, Worked on Gate City News in 1873. 

Published = 18 Oct 1908  Four States Press

  ONE DELEGATE WAS EARLY DAY PRINTER

          Mr. W.H. Fearing is in attendance upon the Arkansas Presbyterian Synod coming as a delegate from the Champion Hill church, near Camden, of which he is an elder.   Mr. Fearing is an old time printer and newspaper man, but he "reformed about twenty five years ago, got married and settled down to  other pursuits and has resided near Camden ever since.  
          Mr. Fearing made first visit to Texarkana in the autumn of 1873 when the town was only "a camp in the woods".  The Cairo & Fulton (now the Iron Mountain)  Railroad was at that time operated no further west than Fulton from which point he made his way to Texarkana by stage.  He stopped only for a few days and then  proceeded to Longview where he secured a job and remained for several months "holding cases" on the "Longview Era".  In 1874 he returned here to accept a place as foreman of the old "Gate City News" founded and owned by Colonel Bain a well known and popular newpaper man of that period who came here from Sherman bringing his newspaper plant with him.  Mr. Fearing re-mained here until the fall of 1874 when he went to Camden where he has since resided.  
          This is the first visit Mr. Fearing has made to Texarkana since he threw up his job on the Gate City News a third of a century ago.  He describes the town of those days as having been little more than a camp.  It was infested by gamblers and grafters, and the saloon busi-was one of its most prominent features.  Everything was  "wide open and the town was decidedly "wild and wooly".
          Mr. Fearing has searched industriously his spare time, since his arrival, for old landmarks, but has been unable to find even one.  Nothing looks at all like it did when  he was here 24 years ago.  At that time the place was a camp with about 1300,people, only a few board shanties, and not a brick house anywhere; now it is a prosperous and rapidly growing city with hundreds of fine homes some of the finest and costliest brick and steel business buildings to be found in the Southwest, and an industrious enterprising population of 30,000 peacable and law-abiding people.