If any early Georgian managed to get a hold of a copy of a newspaper, be it from Boston or New York or Philadelphia, that was quite a feat. Once acquired, that newspaper was something to be treasured. Every page was read and reread many times before it was even considered that someone else might borrow it and take it from your home.
    The Georgia Gazette, published by James Johnston in his Broughton Street office in Savannah, was the state's very first newspaper. Its first issue came out on April 7, 1763. Because Johnston decided to support the continuance of British rule in North America, he was arrested and his office seized by revolutionary Georgia's first government.
    Local citizens William Lancaster and then Edward Welch published the now-pro-American newspaper during the revolutionaries' short period in control of Savannah. On January 21, 1779, the once-again pro-British paper, now entitled the Royal Georgia Gazette, began publication edited by John Daniel Hammerer.
    James Johnston returned to Savannah once it was deemed safe, and resumed publication of the Royal Georgia Gazette in 1779, which he renamed the Gazetteer of the State of Georgia on January 14, 1783.
    By 1800, there were five newspapers in the state, with Savannah sporting both the Savannah Republican and the Columbia Museum and Savannah Advertiser. Only after another seventy-seven years would Bulloch County have its own newspaper.
    Once Reverend Washington L. Geiger opened Excelsior Academy (also known as the Excelsior High School), he was given a printing press by Jimerson Kennedy, so that he might begin a newspaper in Excelsior. He named it, not surprisingly, the Excelsior News.
    F.M. Ingram, then current Superintendent of Excelsior Academy, took over the paper in 1881 and changed its name to the Bulloch Banner. Reverend W.M. Cowart of the First Baptist Church of Statesboro shortly thereafter started what was Statesboro’s first newspaper, the Statesboro Eagle.
    Not long thereafter, however, T.L. Griner bought the Statesboro Eagle and moved it to, of all places, back to Excelsior. By 1887, H.A. Smith and George Clarke, the owners of the Banner Publishing Company in Statesboro, started another Statesboro paper which they named the Bulloch Banner.
   
    Roger Allen is a local lover of history. Allen provides a brief look at Bulloch County's historical past. Email Roger at rwasrer53 @gmail.com