Hubbard City News

Sources disagree on which paper came first. The marker says S. H. Sayer began the Hubbard City News in 1881, the year the town was founded. The Handbook of Texas instead says Hubbard's first newspaper was the Texas Pick and Pan, established that year by Sam Boyd and John Pitts, and that the Hubbard City News succeeded it in 1892. The marker adds that the Mecklin brothers started the Hubbard City Progress in 1901 and that a Mexia company bought the business in 1969. Either way, Hubbard had a newspaper from its first year.

What the plaque says

Hubbard City News S. H. Sayer began publication of the "Hubbard City News" in 1881, the year the town was founded. The business later merged with S. R. Boyd's paper, the "Texas Pick and Pan" and the "Hubbard City Progress", a newspaper started in 1901 by brothers George and Jim Mecklin, former "City News" workers. Through their leadership and later ownership by Andy and Ralph Mecklin, the paper became a prominent publication of central Texas. In 1969 it was purchased by the News Publishing Co. of Mexia. A "City News" office at this site was destroyed by a tornado in 1973. (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 20 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 20 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.
• Hill County Courthouse — 23 mi
  Wesley C. Dodson's limestone Second Empire courthouse of 1890 on the Hillsboro square, gutted by fire on New Year's Day 1993 and rededicated in 1999 after a rebuilding that two Willie Nelson concerts helped pay for.
• Old Fort Parker — 24 mi
  A rebuilt 1830s family stockade near the Navasota River, where a May 1836 attack killed men of the Parker settlement and took five captives, among them nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker.

More markers nearby

• Hubbard — steps away
• Hometown of Tris Speaker — steps away
• Hot Mineral Water Well — 0.3 mi
• Former Site of Liberty Hill Settlement — 3.7 mi