Long Island Daily Press

The Long Island Daily Press was a daily newspaper that was published in Jamaica, Queens. It was founded in 1821 as the Long Island Farmer. The paper’s founder, Henry C. Sleight, was born in New York City in 1792, and raised in Sag Harbor, Long Island. Sleight got his start as a newspaperman when he worked on the staff of the Suffolk County Gazette, a weekly newspaper published in Sag Harbor. During the War of 1812 Sleight enlisted in the army and saw action on the Kentucky frontier. After the war he remained in Kentucky for a few years, during which time he published another weekly newspaper, the Messenger, and later went into the mercantile business. After suffering heavy business losses due to a fire, Sleight returned to New York and settled in Jamaica, where he established the Long Island Farmer.

The Long Island Farmer began as a weekly newspaper, publishing its first issue on January 4, 1821. It continued, sometimes as a weekly and sometimes bi-weekly, under Sleight’s successors Thomas Bradley, Isaac F. Jones and Charles S. Watrous. In the 1880s the paper came under the ownership of John C. Kennehan, a farmer and printer who had been in charge of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle's Long Island Department. At the time Kennehan became its owner, the Farmer’s offices were located on the west side of Herriman Avenue (now 161st Street) in Jamaica. Kennehan was still the paper’s editor in 1898, when Queens County was partitioned, with the western portion of the original county (including Jamaica) becoming part of Greater New York City, while the eastern portion became present-day Nassau County. In response to these changes, Kennehan began to change the Farmer's format and approach to bring it into line with Queens’ new role as part of an emerging metropolis. After Kennehan’s death his nephew James F. Sullivan took over as the Farmer's owner, but after some setbacks he sold his interest in the paper to James O’Rourke.

In 1912 the Long Island Farmer absorbed the Long Island Democrat, Jamaica’s other weekly newspaper. At the same time the Farmer became a daily newspaper. In 1920 a Jamaica lawyer named Benjamin Marvin became the Farmer's sole owner. At the start of the following year the newspaper changed its name to the Long Island Daily Press and Farmer.

...
Wikipedia