Early Register just one of owners' business ventures

James Lyon’s dream of making The Mobile Gazette part of a national network of newspapers evaporated with the end of the War of 1812. Lyon sought to create a national chain of newspapers that would speak as one voice for Thomas Jefferson’s Democrat-Republican Party. But issues raised during the war destroyed national party alignments.

So when Jonathan Battelle and John W. Townsend decided to start a newspaper in Mobile in 1821, they gave it a business name rather than a political name, The Mobile Commercial Register.

The Register was not their first newspaper in Alabama. Jonathan and his older brother, Nathaniel, tired of being merchants in Savannah and decided to move to Alabama shortly after it became a state to try their hand at city building. They bought stock in the Alabama Co. and Nathaniel moved to Montgomery to look after their interests and to help in the laying out of the new town.

Jonathan, meanwhile, remained in Savannah and ordered printing equipment from the North to be shipped to the Georgia port. He began placing ads in The Mobile Gazette in the summer of 1820 announcing his plan to start a newspaper in Montgomery to be called the Republican and asking for subscribers.

After the printing equipment arrived in Savannah, Jonathan had it hauled the 400 miles overland to Montgomery, and in January 1821 the two Battelle brothers published the first edition of The Republican. 

Looking for other opportunities, Jonathan spent part of the summer and fall of 1821 preparing to come to Mobile and to start another newspaper, The Mobile Commercial Register, in partnership with John W. Townsend.

The men had decided to embark into publishing the Register, as they explained in the first issue of Dec. 10, 1821, because of: “The rising importance of the State of Alabama; its progress in wealth and respectability, in which its sea ports so largely participate . . . its consequent increasing weight in the great national scale. . .”

Unspoken, but anticipated, was their hope that the newspaper would aid the men in accumulating wealth from their other business interests, especially real estate speculation.

Newspaper owners rarely made a profit from their publications. Owners made money from other ventures and investments, which is why they were such town boosters in the newspaper columns.