Maxwell Walters, museum director, was busy Tuesday finishing up work on “Fredonia Un-Censored: The History of the Local Press.” Museum organization members were invited to a preview event Friday and the exhibit is open to the public this weekend.

“We tried to get things, borrow things from people who had the originals,” said Walters, old newspapers strewn around him. “Some are from private collections but the majority of things are from our collection.”

In fact, most of the Fredonia Censor items came straight from the source, brought directly from the newspaper when it closed in 1964. Walters said the Censor had a deep association with the Barker museum and the associated library next door — its editors were on the committee that brought it to town in the 1800s.

A particularly striking Censor edition on display is the one from after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. Oddly, the murder of Lincoln was on page 2. However, editors still made it clear something terrible had happened, breaking up the long columns of type with thick, black “mourning borders.”

Henry Frisbee founded the Fredonia Censor.

The Censor moved around over the years. It was in Park Place, spent time in a building at the Main Street intersection where M&T Bank is located now, and moved into the Card building at 50-52 W. Main St. in the 1950s. One display shows photos and articles from that final move.

The newspaper was always run by an owner/editor, beginning with founder Henry Frisbee, who hauled a printing press from Buffalo on an ox cart to start it. There was already a newspaper in Fredonia, which Frisbee worked for, but he was evidently dissatisfied with that publication.

Walters said Frisbee told people he got his news from two sources: The weekly newspaper information exchanges, a sort of forerunner of the Associated Press, which came by mail; and the local tavern. Conveniently, the post office and the tavern were both located in the Park Place building.

The Barker Museum’s exhibit includes displays about each of the Censor’s editors, from Frisbee to the final one, Walter Baker.

Walters said of the earliest editors, “It was really just them. They did all of the printing themselves. They did all of the reporting themselves.”

Submitted photo The headline from the Fredonia Censor when the U.S. won World War I.

The museum director said the paper closed after Baker pulled a classic move for journalists sick of the business: He got a job in public relations. It was with the state government in Albany. Baker tried to sell the Censor, keeping it open for about six months after he took the Albany job, commuting back and forth. However, there were no takers and Baker moved to Albany for good.

“Other newspapers at the time said their finances didn’t make a lot of sense,” Walters commented.

The exhibit focuses on the Censor but also features other northern Chautauqua County newspapers, including the OBSERVER. There is a copy of the first newspaper ever, the Chautauque Gazette, printed in 1817. (That’s the way “Chautauqua” was spelled until about 1860.)

The Fredonia Daily News only ran from May to December in 1897. Its chief, Clara Hammond, was the only female newspaper editor in New York State. However, her run came to an ignominious end when she was charged with libel.

Another presidential assassination, of John F. Kennedy, is noted in an edition of the Grape Belt, a weekly that did business in Brocton and Dunkirk during its lifetime. The “mourning border” is back, around a large photo of the late president. The headline reads, “Soul Of Our Beloved Late President Is Commended to God.”

The exhibit also features machinery, plates, type and other newspaper items, and a brief history of printing.

Walters said the museum is doing the exhibit because newspapers are “one of the best primary sources we have for history. Almost always, the first thing I turn to when I do research for individuals, is newspapers. They’re the first thing to turn to for an accurate accounting of the past. If there’s any question on when anything occurred in Fredonia, we go to the Censor.”

He added, “It seems like the Censor was a labor of love for its whole history. They lasted right up to the 1960s.”

The exhibit is open until September. Walters noted the museum is always looking for new volunteers and interns.