HISTORY OF THE HIGH POINT ENTERPRISE
When the first copies of The High Point Enterprise came off the press in 1885, nobody talked seriously about "the latest news,” one historical report says. What they found in their little, thin, four-page sheet was a collection of anecdotes, bits of reprinted wisdom, some casual items about who had been out of town lately and who was down in the back, a few advertisements by local merchants and an assortment of "discussions.” It was an intensely local newspaper.
So little is known about the beginnings of the Enterprise that it is possible the newspaper first was published – no doubt under another name – as early as the 1870s.
Because few records were kept, no one today knows for sure just when the newspaper we know today as The High Point Enterprise began publication or what its name was, at any given time, during the last decades of the 19th century.
One history book, published in 1976, tells us "the first newspaper ever produced in High Point (perphaps in 1859) was ... the High Point Reporter by James Harvey Moore.” The Civil War cut short its life and the press was sold to satisfy a mortgage claim. It was followed by the Zion Landmark, a church paper by Elder L.I. Bodenheimer. It was succeeded by the High Point Mercury, published by brothers named Blount, followed by the Pioneer (about 1880) by attorney E.D. Steele and Charles Wilson. Shortly thereafter, the Auderkirk or Ouderkirk brothers took control and changed the name of the paper to Farm and Fireside.
Steele soon repurchased the newspaper, then, along with W.A. Blair and Will Richardson guided the weekly for several years. Blair, a Harvard University graduate, was editor, Steele was general manager and Richardson was superintendent. Steele left the newspaper again in 1886 – to assume a federal post in Wyoming – and Charles Crutchfield headed the business and served as editor for nearly two years. In late 1888, the struggling paper was bought ($1,450) by Charles Farriss, who later became president of Stetson University in Florida and had "a sparkling career in education,” according to a report in The High Point Enterprise centennial edition. The Enterprise passed to Farriss’ brother, James Joseph Farriss.
Farriss’ work on behalf of the community took him out of town frequently and, while he was on one such trip in March 1905, his brother Ed and "the boys” at the Enterprise converted the weekly into a daily.
In 1915, Farriss sold the paper to J.P. Rawley, A.L. Stockton and E.B. Jeffress for $5,000 and The High Point Enterprise Inc. was formed with W. A. Hildebrand as president.
By 1919, Parker R. Anderson bought out the owners but retained Rawley as general manager. The following year, Col. Wescott Roberson, Carter Dalton, H.A. Millis, J. H. Millis, R.B. Terry and Rawley joined forces to buy the paper. A year later, Terry and Rawley bought all the outstanding stock.
Terry and Rawley and their heirs owned the paper jointly for 78 years before the Rawley family trust sold its half to Paxton Media Group in 1999. Randall B. Terry Jr. was publisher for two decades until his death in 2004, after which Paxton acquired the other half of the newspaper. Richard A. Bean became publisher of the Enterprise in May 2004.
The newspaper’s historians did not tell us on precisely what day the name "Enterprise” came into being or why. The best evidence these days is that the publishers in 1935 chose the final week of January to declare their company to be 50 years old. And in 1985, their heirs claimed in late January the newspaper to be 100 years old.
The Enterprise is in possession of just a single role of microfilm with reproductions of newspapers it published between September 1886 and August 1888. Those were the only papers that still were on hand from "the early years” when microfilming began. The next roll of film begins with the newspaper of May 1, 1915, and starts an almost complete file of papers from that day to this.
Today, The High Point Enterprise is "committed to this community ... and always will serve it by being an intensely local newspaper of excellent quality every day.”
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