PHIL DI VECE News Contributor Sun, 01/17/2021 - 8:45am
A portion of the Lincoln Telegraph, an early Wiscasset newspaper that resident Steve Christiansen shared.
One of the oldest photographs of Wiscasset village taken not long after the Rundlett Block shown at the right was constructed in 1871, 50 years after the final edition of the Lincoln Telegraph was printed.
Let us travel back in time to before Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, television and radio. We’ll stop the clock 200 years ago at 1820. If you lived then, you got your news by word-of-mouth and from newspapers.
That spring, Samuel B. Dana, a printer by trade, decided Wiscasset needed its own newspaper. It had been 12 years since The Republican, the town’s previous newspaper, printed its final edition. Dalton was determined to start his own newspaper and did so, naming it the Lincoln Telegraph. Maybe he chose that name in honor of the Wiscasset Telegraph