Former local publisher joins Hall of Fame

A Donley County pioneer was honored by the Panhandle Press Association during its 106th annual convention at the Bairfield Activity Center last Friday, April 15.

Edward E. Carhart was inducted into the PPA Hall of Fame for his contributions to the development of the newspaper industry in the Panhandle during his time as publisher of The Clarendon News, which is today’s Enterprise.

Carhart was born December 15, 1863, in Watertown, New York, and his family moved to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 1874 where, at an early age, he and his sister began publishing a religious newspaper, The Early Dawn.

In June 1878, that Wisconsin office began printing the Texas Panhandle’s first newspaper once a month for Carhart’s cousin, Rev. Lewis H. Carhart, who had founded the Clarendon colony in Texas earlier that year.

Two years later, Rev. Carhart enticed his young cousin to move to Texas to take over the paper. At age 16, with financial backing from his father, Ed Carhart left Wisconsin for Texas, stopping in Chicago to purchase a printing press for the colony. He shipped it to Gainesville and there loaded it into a wagon for a three-week journey to Clarendon.

The young man installed the Panhandle’s first printing press in the Clarendon News office, which was a picket house chinked with mud and with a dirt floor. The young Carhart turned the News into a weekly publication and printed his first edition in July of 1880, a feat which impressed the colonists and “swelled the hat band” of the young man. He increased the annual subscription rate from 50-cents to $2 per year.

The next year he married Mary Estella Brewer. They were the first young couple married in Donley County, and they eventually made their home in Panhandle where they had four children. Carhart sold the Clarendon newspaper in 1884 later and his family became early pioneers in Carson County.

During his lifetime, Ed was engaged in the drug store business, banking, an auto dealership, and a grain elevator. He served for a time as postmaster of Panhandle and as treasurer of Carson County. Ed Carhart died on February 4, 1946, and is buried in Panhandle.

Carhart’s great-grandson, Pat Carhart of Rio Rancho, New Mexico, accepted the award for the family.

Also on Friday night, longtime Groom News publisher Phil Miller was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Members of the PPA Hall of Fame are listed on a plaque that is permanently housed at the Saints’ Roost Museum in its newspaper exhibit. Ed Carhart is the fifth Clarendon journalist to join the Hall of Fame.