John Gordon Cashman published the first edition of the Vicksburg Evening Post on May 4, 1883, in a second-floor office on Washington Street. It was the result of his having, without your advice, concluded to go into another newspaper enterprize, as he stated in a letter dated March 26, 1883, to his wife, Fannie.

At the time he was working for a morning newspaper and became weary of the arduous night work, as it was injurious to both eyesight and health. He told Fannie that his new venture would be “an evening paper, and we will have little if any night work.

He named it the Vicksburg Evening Post to distinguish it from the dominant daily morning newspaper of the day. Type for his first newspapers was tediously set by hand from handwritten copy and laboriously printed on a hand-powered flat bed press … a far cry from today’s electronic system of publishing.

Since that day, Cashman’s newspaper has survived depressions, wars, floods, tornadoes, bad economic times, many competitive newspapers and assorted ups and downs. Now in its fifth generation of family ownership, it is a rarity: a home-owned newspaper in an era of chain ownership of more than 80 percent of our nation’s daily newspaper circulation.

In 1883, Cashman’s newspaper was a bold undertaking. Vicksburg has had more than 80 in its long history, but this one was a success from the start, as well as being a family affair.

As the sons of John G. Cashman grew, each joined his father in working in the business. John Jr. was a reporter; William Bernard, and Randall became printers. Later, Randall pursued a career at First National Bank. Frank was a reporter and succeeded his father as editor. Louis concentrated his energies on the business side of the newspaper and later served as editor and publisher. The founding Cashman’s only daughter, Katherine, served briefly as a reporter.

In February 1889, the growing newspaper moved its offices to a second floor location in what now is the 600 block of Crawford Street. After a few years it moved again to a nearby, larger building in the same block of Crawford Street.

Over those early years, that old hand-powered press gave way to an electric power, and hand-set type was put to rest by invention of the Linotype, a revolutionary machine that took molten lead and transformed it into a column-wide line of type as fast as eight lines a minute. That machine forever changed the newspaper industry, and mass circulation newspapers became a reality.

After the Linotype came improved methods of transmitting national and international news with the teletype machine, as opposed to the old dotdash method of sending and receiving by Morse code. Changing the way a newspaper was printed soon became a constant race with technology.

Fierce competition of the Vicksburg Evening Post and The Vicksburg Herald finally was subdued when the Cashman family purchased the Herald on February 7, 1925. For a quarter of century after that Vicksburg had a morning and an afternoon paper, which was combined on Sundays as The Sunday Post-Herald.

In 1951, The Post designed and built a modern two-story building at the corner of South and Cherry, the first issue at the location being printed on April 7, 1952.

In December 1953, tragedy struck Vicksburg that will forever be remembered by those who lived it. A violent tornado killed dozens of citizens. It destroyed the building from which the newspaper had just moved. It also offered the newspaper staff a challenge.