Hopkins County Echo-Daily News-Telegram
Sulphur Springs, Hopkins County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Deed records indidcate that a newspaper was being published in Hopkins County as early as 1854. It was known as the "Texas Star" and was located in Tarrant, which then served as county seat. In 1855, the printing presses were purchased by William Wortham, who moved the equipment to Bright Star (later Sulphur Springs) and founded a paper he called the "Independent Frontier." In 1864, Wortham renamed it the "Sulphur Springs Gazette" and retained ownership until 1898. The "Echo" was founded by Ezra Tate in 1878 as a competitor to the "Gazette." During its 39-year ownership by the Tate family, the "Echo" acquired two other local publications, the "Evening News" and the "Morning Telegram." The Tate family merged these newspapers into the "Daily News-Telegram," while also maintaining the weekly "Echo." During 1917, the Bagwell Company gained ownership of the "Echo." The "News-Telegram," "Daily Gazette," and "Weekly Gazette" were later purchased and formed into one daily publication known as the "Daily News-Telegram." The "Echo" was maintained as a weekly. A central printing company, Echo Publishing Co., purchased the publications in 1951.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Printer's ink flowed early in Hopkins County: deed records show a paper, the Texas Star, publishing at the county seat of Tarrant by 1854. When William Wortham bought the presses in 1855 and hauled them to Bright Star — later Sulphur Springs — he launched a lineage of newspapers that split, competed, and merged over the next century. The Echo, founded in 1878, absorbed rivals under the long stewardship of the Tate family, and through a tangle of consolidations the county's papers eventually became the Daily News-Telegram alongside the weekly Echo.
Why it matters
The paper's long, braided history shows how a rural county's press grew up with the community itself, carrying local news and binding scattered settlers into a shared civic life.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1850s Hopkins County was frontier farm country in northeast Texas, only recently organized and thinly settled. Texas had joined the United States in 1845, and settlers were pouring into the blackland prairies and timber of the region, clearing land and founding small towns.
In a place like that, a newspaper was more than a business. It carried state and national news to people far from any big city, printed legal notices, advertised local stores and gave a young community a public voice. A press was also heavy and valuable equipment, and whoever owned one could shape local opinion.
The paper's story runs through dramatic decades: secession and the Civil War, Reconstruction, the coming of the railroads and the growth of market towns across Texas. Over the same years American journalism changed from small partisan weeklies to competitive dailies, and the Hopkins County press followed that path.
People & events
Deed records show printing in Hopkins County as early as 1854, at the old county seat of Tarrant, under the name Texas Star. The story took a decisive turn in 1855, when William Wortham bought the presses and hauled them to Bright Star, the settlement later known as Sulphur Springs. There he started a new paper, the Independent Frontier, a name that fit its setting.
Wortham stayed with the paper for decades. He renamed it the Sulphur Springs Gazette in 1864, in the middle of the Civil War, and kept control until 1898, more than forty years at the helm. That kind of continuity made a newspaper part of a town's identity.
Competition arrived in 1878, when Ezra Tate founded the Echo to challenge the Gazette. Under the Tate family the Echo grew by absorbing rivals, taking in the Evening News and the Morning Telegram and merging them into a daily while keeping the weekly Echo alive. New owners followed: the Bagwell Company in 1917, further consolidations that brought the Gazettes into the fold, and finally Echo Publishing Co., which acquired the papers in 1951.
Its place in the American story
This braided history of rival papers, mergers and new owners is a small-scale version of what happened to American newspapers across the country. In the 19th century many towns supported several competing papers. Over the 20th century, economics pushed most of them to consolidate into one dominant local daily.
Local papers like these were also the working record of American democracy at the grassroots. They reported elections, printed court and land notices, and recorded births, deaths and the everyday business of a community. Historians still rely on them, often above almost every other source, to reconstruct how ordinary people lived.
The move of a press from one settlement to another in 1855 is a reminder too. On the frontier, a town's future could hinge on whether it had the courthouse, the railroad or the newspaper. Owning the presses helped put Sulphur Springs on the map.
If you visit
Sulphur Springs is a pleasant county-seat town in northeast Texas, with a historic downtown that rewards a slow walk. As you look around, imagine the square in the days when several papers competed for readers and the news arrived by printer's type set letter by letter.
The marker tells a story that is easier to feel than to see. A good way to connect with it is to picture the town that newspapers like these served: its storefronts, its courthouse business and the farm families who came into town to trade and catch up on the news.
This stop works well on a drive across northeast Texas's small towns. It is especially rewarding for anyone who loves local history, family research or old newspapers, since generations of a county's life were recorded in columns like these.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · William Wortham
- · Ezra Tate
Themes & tags
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