08:03 AM EDT on Wednesday, July 21, 2004

BY MARK ARSENAULT and PAUL EDWARD PARKER
Journal Staff Writers

PROVIDENCE -- One-hundred-seventy-five years ago today, publisher John Miller issued Vol. 1, No. 1, of a new daily newspaper, the "Providence Daily Journal, and General Advertiser," a four-page broadsheet hand-pressed into paper made from recycled linen rag.

Miller promised in his editorial message to print for Providence "a general vehicle of correct information on all interesting and important subjects."

The line of succession from that first newspaper, of July 21, 1829, to the one published today is unbroken -- The Providence Journal has never missed a scheduled day of publication.

Providence was a town of some 16,000 residents in July 1829. We don't know how many copies of the first Providence Journal were printed, but it was probably no more than a few hundred.

Since then, Rhode Island and The Journal have grown up together.

As part of the 175th anniversary celebration, the paper will sponsor a WaterFire tonight, from about 8:15 to midnight. Members of the board of directors of Dallas-based Belo Corp., the Journal's parent company, are due in Rhode Island for the celebration.

Journal employees have contributed items for a commemorative time capsule, to be sealed today in a canister and displayed in the Journal Building's lobby on Fountain Street until the paper's 200th anniversary, in 2029.

Time capsules are gifts from one generation to the next. Ours will help show our descendants how their primitive ancestors produced a newspaper every day in 2004. There's also a pair of suspenders, the trademark of political columnist M. Charles Bakst, in our time capsule; a headset used to take incoming calls for classified advertising; and a CD-ROM recording of The Journal's 175th anniversary radio advertising spot. (If there are no CD-ROM players at The Journal in 2029, somebody may have to buy one at a yard sale . . . there will always be yard sales in Rhode Island.)

Special 175th Anniversary Section

Reaching back 175 years, each edition of the newspaper is itself a time capsule of what life was like on the day it was printed.

The first edition of The Daily Journal is stuffed with snippets about Providence and Rhode Island in the summer of 1829. A letter to the editor complained about the new president, Andrew Jackson. Whale oil was for sale on South Water Street. Even back then, charlatans peddled miracle cures for baldness -- with testimonials.

Three decades before the Civil War, a news item reprinted from a Richmond, Va., paper told of slaves who murdered their master because he intended to sell some of them away from their families.

The first Journal also records this curse, overheard from the mouth of a toastmaster: "Long corns and short shoes, to the enemies of this Commonwealth."

THE DAILY Journal's roots date back to John Miller's twice-weekly paper in Providence, the "Manufacturers' & Farmers' Journal, Providence and Pawtucket Advertiser," which he started in 1820, promising to be "a faithful reporter of the passing news."

Nine years later, Miller started The Daily Journal. It was not Providence's first daily paper -- Miller's competitor in 1829, "The Daily Advertiser," beat him to press by one day. For a newspaper war, the battle between Providence's first two dailies was brief: The Advertiser folded in four years. The Providence Journal lives on -- as America's oldest daily paper in continuous publication.

The Journal has for 175 years maintained its foothold in downtown Providence, beginning in the Granite Block on the east side of the Providence River. The paper moved across the river in 1844, occupied several homes around downtown, before settling into the ornate Old Journal Building, still standing at Westminster and Eddy streets. The Journal moved into its current headquarters at 75 Fountain St. in 1934.

In its early decades, The Journal was the voice of Henry Anthony, its owner and editor -- and a Republican U.S. senator from Rhode Island. Anthony guided the paper for more than 40 years, until his death in 1884.

During the Dorr Rebellion in 1842, The Journal office became the meeting place for the Law and Order faction that opposed Dorr. Influential Rhode Island men continued to meet at The Journal after the insurrection to argue about politics and public policy. The meetings, known as the Journal "Sunday School," helped shape the editorial positions of the paper, which helped shape Rhode Island.

The Journal covered Abraham Lincoln's 1860 campaign speech in Providence, and printed the president's brief, "thrilling words" at a battlefield in Pennsylvania -- the speech known as the Gettysburg Address. To satisfy the demand for more battlefield news during the Civil War, The Journal started an afternoon paper, The Evening Bulletin, in 1863.

The Journal added a Sunday paper in 1885, and in 1889 was among the first to invest in a new way to set type for printing: the Mergenthaler Linotype machine, which became standard equipment across the newspaper industry for nearly 100 years.

In 1912, a Journal reporter was among the first newsmen to interview survivors of the Titanic.

From 1912 to 1923, The Journal was led by editor John R. Rathom, a shameless show-boater, and a liar with a fantastic imagination, who invented stories about directing an army of counterspies against Germany before World War I.

Next came editor Sevellon Brown, who started the suburban bureau system to ensure that a Journal reporter was never more than 20 minutes from any news event, and founded the American Press Institute. It was the beginning of what we consider the modern era of the newspaper.

In World War II, the Journal sponsored a dance hall in downtown Providence for servicemen. The paper recorded the shock of the community after the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King Jr. were shot in the 1960s; it recorded the anguish of the Vietnam War in the 1970s. Journal writers were in New York when the ball bounced through Bill Buckner's legs in 1986. They were in New York in 2001 after the jets brought down the World Trade Center towers. They were at the scene of The Station nightclub on a cold February night in 2003, to cover the deadliest fire ever on Rhode Island soil, and then they spread across the state to cover the ripples of the disaster that claimed 100 lives.

When Journal employees of the next generation open our time capsule in 2029, they will find copies of our Station coverage.

They will also find today's newspaper, a snapshot of life, on this one day in Rhode Island history.

The Providence Journal today marks its 175th anniversary with a special 48-page special section. The insert traces the Journal's history through the decades, highlighting the stories -- big and small -- that have defined the newspaper and Rhode Island. The section includes a reprint of the July 21, 1829, "Providence Daily Journal, and General Advertiser," a four-page broadsheet, unearthed this year in the Library of Congress.