TheOld Colony Memorial began in 1822.[4] Publishers have included George F. Andrews, Winslow W. Avery, Allen Danforth, James A. Danforth, Charles Carroll Doten, William T. Hollis, John Morisey, Thomas Prince, James Thurber.[5][6] Among the editors: Joseph Francis Bittinger.[7]
In the 1830s, "connected with the printing office [was] a newspaper reading room where intelligence from various quarters [were] daily received, and [was] a pleasant resort for the reading gentlemen at their leisure hours. Under the same roof [was] a book-store and bindery, and a circulating library."[8] In the 19th century its main competitor was thePlymouth Rock newspaper.[9] In the 1880s theO.C. Memorial office stood on Court Street near Shirley Square,[10] and by the 1900s on Middle Street.
K. Prescott Low, whose family had publishedThe Patriot Ledger for a century, purchasedMemorial Press Group (MPG) in 1979 and incorporated it into the privately owned George W. Prescott Publishing Company. Thirty years later, however, in 1997, Low found that "mega-players competing with us" made family ownership of theLedger and MPG uneconomic, and sought to sell them.[11]
A buyer quickly emerged: James F. Plugh, owner ofThe Enterprise, theBrocktondaily newspaper that competed with theLedger and several MPG papers. Plugh's Newspaper Media LLC, later renamed Enterprise NewsMedia, bought the Prescott Publishing for an estimatedUS$60 toUS$70 million.[12]
^Davis, William T. (1885),History of the town of Plymouth, Philadelphia: J.W. Lewis,OCLC1805660,OL6905684M
^John Joseph May (1902),Danforth genealogy: Nicholas Danforth, of Framlingham, England, and Cambridge, N. E. [1589-1638] and William Danforth, of Newbury, Mass. [1640-1721] and their descendants, Boston: C. H. Pope,OCLC1668736,OL6924981M
^James Thacher (1835),History of the town of Plymouth, from its first settlement in 1620, to the present time, Boston: Marsh, Capen & Lyon,OCLC2717953,OL14013347M
^Richard Swainson Fisher (1855),A new and complete statistical gazetteer of the United States of America, New York: J. H. Colton and company,OL6928733M
^Old Plymouth: a guide to its localities and objects of interest. Plymouth: Old colony memorial press, 1886
