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.
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Related people
- · William Wortham
- · Ezra Tate
Themes & tags
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