William Moseley Swain (May 12, 1809, in Manlius, New York – February 16, 1868, in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Since ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

) was a 19th-century American newspaper journalist, publisher, editor and newspaper owner and businessman. He was one of the founders and proprietors of the most recent daily newspaper in

, '' The Public Ledger'' established in 1836 (along with Arunah Shepherdson Abell (1806–1888) lso known as "A.S. Abell" and Azariah H. Simmons)Robinson, Elwyn B. The Public Ledger: An Independent Newspaper, ''Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography'' (January 1940) and also served as editor. The paper was the first daily to establish a pony-express-style delivery service in the late 1830s and through the next few decades for routing their reporters/correspondents dispatches from throughout the eastern states. The system was made famous 25 years later by the

United States Post Office Department The United States Post Office Department (USPOD; also known as the Post Office or U.S. Mail) was the predecessor of the United States Postal Service, in the form of a Cabinet department, officially from 1872 to 1971. It was headed by the postma ...

in 1861 with a series of riders and horses across the Western United States from

Missouri Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...

to California, at the same time of the construction of the

Western Union The Western Union Company is an American multinational financial services company, headquartered in Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1851 as the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company in Rochester, New York, the company cha ...

telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas ...

line, coast to coast. ''The Ledger'' and its younger sister paper established a year later by both Abell and Swain in 1837, '' The Sun'' of

Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was ...

in neighboring

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean t ...

to the southwest, were both of the first publications to use the new amazing technology of the electric telegraph invented by their friend, former artist/painter Samuel F. B. Morse (1791–1872), and using his

Morse Code Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one ...

. It was first tested on a line between

at the

Baltimore and Ohio Railroad The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was the first common carrier railroad and the oldest railroad in the United States, with its first section opening in 1830. Merchants from Baltimore, which had benefited to some extent from the construction of ...

's old first main terminal station on the waterfront Pratt Street in

following the right-of-way and tracks of the B. & O. Railroad's recently completed Washington Line between the two major cities to the

Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...

chambers on

Capitol Hill Capitol Hill, in addition to being a metonym for the United States Congress, is the largest historic residential neighborhood in Washington, D.C., stretching easterly in front of the United States Capitol along wide avenues. It is one of the ...

in the United States Capitol in the national capital city of

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

, 40 miles southwest in 1844. Both ''The Sun'' and ''The Ledger'' made extensive use of the new revolutionary quick communications system only three years later to transmit war news of the events and battles in the

Mexican–American War The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the (''United States intervention in Mexico''), was an armed conflict between the United States and Mexico from 1846 to 1848. It followed the ...

(1847–1848), thousands of miles to the far southwest along the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United ...

coast and interior of Mexico as the hostilities extended into the capital of

Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley o ...

, until the surrender. In 1847, the Philadelphia ''Public Ledger'' was printed on'he first rotary press ever built. In May 1845, Swain was one of the incorporators of the pioneering Magnetic Telegraph Company, and from 1850, served as its president. In this company, he was an associate of the inventor, Samuel F. B. Morse, and the chief promoter,

Amos Kendall Amos Kendall (August 16, 1789 – November 12, 1869) was an American lawyer, journalist and politician. He rose to prominence as editor-in-chief of the '' Argus of Western America'', an influential newspaper in Frankfort, the capital of the U.S ...

, who was another former newspaperman. Swain was buried in The Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. William Swain Memorial

Swain's son, William J. Swain founded a newspaper titled ''The Public Record'' in 1870, which later became '' The Philadelphia Record''.(June 18, 1903)
Death of William J. Swaim
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

References

External links

Brief biography and genealogical information
{{DEFAULTSORT:Swain, William Moseley 1809 births 1868 deaths Businesspeople from Philadelphia 19th-century American journalists American male journalists 19th-century American newspaper founders 19th-century American male writers Journalists from Pennsylvania Writers from Philadelphia Burials at The Woodlands Cemetery