Historic Midland

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Stars and Christmas bells adorn
Midland streets in this photograph.
Gazette-Examiner, or as it is today, The Midland
Reporter-Telegram.
The first newspaper in Midland, The Midland
Enterprise, was published by C.E Gilbert for 11
months in 1884 apparently beginning shortly
after the community got its start. However, no
copies are known to exist.
The first known newspaper published in
Midland of which there are copies extant was
The Staked Plain, published in 1885 and 1886
by John C. Rathbun. Copies of two dates of this
newspaper are maintained by the Midland
County Historical Museum.
A single copy of another early Midland newspaper,
known as The Western Eye Opener, is also
on file at the historical museum. It is for the date
October 24, 1896 and was found in the cornerstone
of St. George’s Catholic Church.
The Midland Gazette also operated in the early
years, since originals or microfilms exist from
the years 1889, 1890 and 1905. An article in the
Midland Reporter-Telegram of June 20, 1976
indicated that the publisher was an Englishman
named Bert Rawlins. M.M. Pittman was listed as
the proprietor and Albert S. Hawkins as editor.
During that era, The Midland Livestock Reporter
was started with Rawlins as publisher. However,
it was soon taken over by Arkansas newsman and
printer C.C. Watson on July 25, 1899.
On the heels of The Livestock Reporter came
The Midland Examiner, which changed hands
several times. One of the owners was the Rev.
A.C. Parker, an early-day pastor of The First
Christian Church.
Watson dropped the middle name of The
Midland Livestock Reporter, making it The
Midland Reporter.
T. Paul Barron purchased The Reporter from
Watson and converted it into a semi-weekly in
1925 and a daily in 1929. In the same month
that the newspaper went daily, Barron and two
Amarillo publishers formed the Midland
Publishing Co. with the purchase of The Daily
Telegram. That consolidation resulted in The
Midland Reporter-Telegram.
Barron became the sole owner in July 1936,
selling it to James N. Allison, Sr., on August
15, 1940.
The early Midland newspapers promoted settlement
in the Midland region. In The Staked
Plain, editor Rathbun encouraged immigration
to Midland.
After Allison bought the newspaper in 1940,
he published it until his death on January 14,
1975. That same month, James N. “Jimmy”
Allison, Jr., became publisher.
The younger Allison, who was widely
admired in the city and a prominent civic
leader, had returned to Midland the year before
to rejoin his parents in the family newspaper
business.
During the 1950s, Allison became a close
friend and political promoter of George H.W.
Bush. It was during those years that Allison
played a special “role in Bush’s rites of passage
from the sinecure position of Midland County
chairman for the Eisenhower-Nixon ticket in
1956 into the arena of high-stakes elective politics…,”
according to an article by Peter Roussel,
one-time press secretary for Congressman Bush.
In 1966, Allison directed Bush’s successful
campaign for a seat in Congress from Houston’s
Seventh District, where Bush had moved from
Midland in 1958, and he later joined Bush’s staff
in Washington, D.C. From that vantage point,
Jimmy Allison was named deputy chairman of
the Republican National Committee in April
1969, a position he held until December 15,
1970, when he resigned to organize a political
consulting firm in Washington. Allison liquidated
that firm in the summer of 1974 and
72 ✦ HISTORIC MIDLAND