Pictured is a view of the south side of Second Street between Diamond Avenue and Washington Street in 1915. The Signal office is clearly seen on the far left. This structure, with the two adjoining brick buildings, collapsed during the devastating 1937 flood . Also shown is the banner as it appeared in 1928.
(By Stephen Kelley from the People’s Defender 1983)
In last week’s column we briefly mentioned Jess A. Perry, son of Manchester’s first mayor. Jess was born and raised in Manchester and left a lasting heritage on the river settlement. It was in October, 1881 that Perry founded the seventh newspaper to be published in that village, The Manchester Signal.
Before venturing out on his own as a publisher, Jess Perry had spent twenty years as a typographer and printer for various newspapers throughout southern Ohio. After establishing the Signal, he continued as editor and proprietor for over two decades, selling his paper circa 1904.
Perry sold the Signal to Wirt Mains who then edited the publication for about two years before selling controlling interest to Liewellyn C. Porter. Porter was from the Ebenezer community in Brown County, the son of a farming family. He apparently did not care for the everyday hassles of publishing a weekly newspaper and sold the Signal back to Mains who had stayed on as managing editor. Mains then retained ownership of the paper until 1918 when he sold out and moved to Louisville, Kentucky.
The new owner/editor of the Signal was Otis White, another native son of Brown County. White was an ambitious man, full of ideas, and immediately began upgrading the Signal’s operation. In 1920 he promised his readers that he would “continue the improvement of the paper from week to week until we stand second to none in this section.”
In addition to improving the overall quality of the paper, White also took the bold step to build the Signal into a daily newspaper. By 1930 White and his family were printing the Signal “every morning except Sunday.”
In 1932, White formed a partnership with Ray C. Wilkerson and, together, the two men published the Signal for the following five years. In 1937, White sold his remaining interest in the paper to Wilkerson who continued as owner/editor for the next five years.
The Second World War brought on severe financial difficulties for Wilkerson’s Signal. Due to cutbacks in advertising revenues and loss of readership, The Signal once again became a weekly, Being printed each Thursday morning.
As the paper began struggling for survival, Wilkerson sold it in 1942 to Morgan Ross who edited The Ripley Bee. Ross obviously thought he could reverse the direction the Signal was then taking. Instead, things continued to worsen and by February 1945, the paper’s advertising revenue was nil. Before Ross could close the paper down, the Ohio River obliged and did it for him. The rain swollen stream began flooding the valley and by the second week in March, crested over the sixty-foot mark. As it slowly receded, it left in its wake the ruins of the Signal’s press. The flood had sounded the death Knell for the sixty-three-year-old paper. Ross called it quits.
Two years passed before the Signal was resurrected. William “Bill” Woolard and his wife, Georgia Yates, bought the publishing rights to the Signal from The Ripley Bee and began printing the once defunct paper in June, 1947. Bill was a native of Logan, Ohio and a veteran of fourteen newspapers. He was compelled to move to Manchester by his homesick wife who had been born and raised in the river town. Thus, the Signal experienced a new birth and is, this month, celebrating it’s one-hundredth anniversary of publication. The Woolard’s continue to own and publish the Signal today, longer than any of the six publishers who preceded them.
