This is the story about the mysterious journey of a centuries-old newspaper.
It’s also a long overdue correction of a probable typo it contains.
More on Repository founder John Saxton’s 204-year-old printing mistake later.
The current mystery is how Gina Silkworth’s family got a newspaper that is more than 200 years old from Canton to Colorado, despite the family having few connections to Ohio.
Silkwood, of Aurora, Colorado, northeast of Denver, was going through belongings of her late grandfather, who also lived near Denver. In those many boxes and other containers, she discovered a newspaper, identified on its front page as the June 6, 1822, edition of The Ohio Repository, which now is called The Canton Repository.
“My grandfather, the patriarch of our family, Malcolm Cleland, passed away Dec. 30, 2025, at 96 years of age. Unfortunately, he follows my grandmother Martha who passed away in 2019. They were married for about 60 years,” she said. “With both of them being gone a wealth of photos and family history has fallen to us to sort through, and with that we have the history they inherited from their parents, and their own grandparents and maybe even farther back than that when looking at the age of the paper.”
The paper most likely traveled through generations on her grandmother’s side of the family, she said.
“I have in my possession now my great-grandmother Ruth’s belongings that my grandmother received when her mother passed away,” she explained. “It is clear my great-grandmother had held onto the possessions of her late husband Roscoe because I found this old newspaper in the same general collection of things from my grandmother’s dad, Roscoe Spencer Hill. The newspaper was with the land deed for the tract of land his own father Earl C. Hill (my grandmother’s grandfather) purchased in Nebraska as they made their way west. It was also with the Civil War Pension documents for Earl C. Hill’s father, Joseph E. Spencer.
“Joseph E. Spencer is the only one with ties to Ohio, as he married Mary Ellen Meeks and she was born in Champaign County, Ohio, but even then, she was born AFTER this paper was printed. So maybe this is from her own mother’s or fathers’ collection as they were married and settled in Adams Township, Ohio.”
Still, all of this is conjecture, she said.
“There is no one alive even remotely able to give us an answer.”
News in paper brings history home
The content in the newspaper itself is interesting, Silkworth said, such as news of the hostilities that were beginning between Russia and Turkey.
“My husband, Ryan, is really into history,” she said, “and he was fascinated by what is in it. You hear about history, but this was the news of the day.”
News of that day in 1822 included a report of an illness derived from dog bites – hydrophobia – that killed many in a family in Canada.
“I’m a nurse,” Silkworth said, “so I was drawn to that piece about hydrophobia, which obviously is rabies.”
And, there was a “little blurb” about the disrespectful drinking of rum during the excavation of a canal on Long Island. Several skeletons of native Americans surmised to have been interred for more than a century were buried along with other items – “a bottle of rum, a kettle, tomahawk.” They were recovered in the digging of the canal and “the rum is of a most delicious flavor, acquired by age.”
“I thought, ‘Oh my, they drank the ceremonial rum’ that was buried!” Silkworth said.
Preserving memories and history
Silkworth took photos of each page of the newspaper so she would not have to excessively touch the artifact as she read it. She said the publication “doesn’t look over 200 years old.”
“You can still read every bit of the paper easily. It doesn’t feel brittle.”
Tucked in an envelope with other documents it likely had been untouched for decades.
“I don’t know if my grandfather even knew it was there,” said Silkworth, who plans to keep the newspaper in its original place until she can talk to someone who could advise her on proper ways to preserve the paper.
How the paper came to be among her family belongings remains a mystery. Silkworth said that a name – John Kelly or John Kelley – is written in ink on the upper left corner of the paper’s front page, but Silkworth doesn’t recognize it from her family tree.
“It could have been anyone who first acquired it,” she said, “maybe just someone passing through Ohio.”
What Silkworth does know is that she will keep it, store it safely, and allow it to continue through additional generations of her family.
“It is a special responsibility for me to keep these memories alive,” she said. “I found it remarkable that this paper is still being produced all of these years later and I was excited to reach out to show you all. It is a fascinating peek into the lives of Americans and Ohioans over 200 years ago.”
Mistake of the past revealed
Which brings us to consider that unfortunate typo of the past.
Since she found the paper, Silkworth had believed it to be the June 6, 1822 edition. That’s the date that was printed on the front page. It’s a natural assumption.
But, the electronic archives of the Repository reveal a different June 6, 1822, edition. Other articles. Different news.
The archived edition included foreign news from the Sandwich Islands on the front page, in the same position as Silkworth’s paper published a poem about the “Death of Gen. Stark,” Gen. John Stark, after whom Stark County is named.
The archives offer no paper for June 13, 1822, however, and, not coincidentally that is the date printed on the third page of Silkworth’s newspaper.
It appears that printer John Saxton forgot to change the date from June 6 on his press for the front page when he published his paper for June 13, 1822.
It is for that mistake that we should offer a belated correction and a sincere apology to history – almost 204 years after the fact.
Reach Gary at gary.brown.rep@gmail.com. On “X”: @gbrownREP.
This article originally appeared on The Repository: Centuries-old Repository found in Colorado
Reporting by Gary Brown, Special to The Canton Repository / The Repository
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