June 4, 1845 was a day of joy for the Harman family.

The future founder of The Lexington Dispatch was born at his parents’ Harman Hotel on the unpaved Main Street of Lexington Courthouse.

Godfrey Michael Harman grew interested in newspapers at age 10 by helping at The Lexington Telegraph.

When war erupted at Fort Sumter April 12, 1861, Josh Harman rushed to join the Confederate Army. He was only 15 and was sent home.

Fearing the war would end before he could experience it, he enlisted again.

After the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court House April 9, 1865, Harman returned home.

We can only imagine what he must have felt when he found the town in ruins.

Union troops had burned the courthouse, St. Stephens Lutheran Church and his family’s hotel. Even The Lexington Telegraph was gone.

Josh Harman was no quitter. He opened a mercantile store across from the hotel where the Walker Morgan law office stands today.

He built his home on the corner, and, at the urging of the community, founded The Lexington Dispatch.

The exact date of that inaugural edition is uncertain.

An item in The Charleston Daily News suggests it may have been Oct. 7, 1870.

Printing back then was a laborious process. Type was set by hand and pages, one at a time, were printed on a flat bed press. The ink was allowed to dry and the pages printed on the other side.

Publishing was a work of passion, skill and drudgery.

Today’s modern presses and digital editions were more than a century away.

Josh Harman lived to see his little newspaper become The Dispatch-News.

The paper passed through several owners until the Bruner family acquired it and sold it to Mark Ethridge, who sold it to the Bellune family and a silent partner.

The Bellunes founded the Lexington County Chronicle in 1992 and reacquired The Dispatch-News in 2001.

Lexington County has grown from less than 13,000 in Josh Harman’s day to an estimated 300,000 today.

The community has been good to us over these years.

We are grateful to you, our subscribers and advertisers, for your support.

– MacLeod & Jerry Bellune