The Advertiser Democrat is a weekly newspaper serving 18 towns in the Greater Oxford Hills region of western Maine in the United States.

However, for reasons unknown, the Advertiser officially dates itself from 1826, when Barton moved the newspaper from Paris Hill to neighboring Norway, Maine.

Barton was a supporter of John Quincy Adams for president, a move which reportedly put him out of step with his Paris Hill neighbors, and even, seemingly, his own editorial staff.

On December 14, 1826, the paper carried this terse notice: As the Observer is now published at Norway, the labors of the present Editor will terminate with this number.

After just seven issues, he sold the paper to George W. Millett, of Norway, and Octavious King, of Paris, Maine, both of whom had been apprentice printers at the original Observer.

Millett and King quickly changed the name of their paper to the Oxford Democrat and moved it back to Paris Hill.

A decade later, fire destroyed the Democrat's printing offices and the following year, 1850, Millett sold the paper to George L. Mellen & Co.

Then, during the height of the depression, in 1933, Forbes, who appears to have had sole ownership of the Democrat by then, sold out to Fred W. Sanborn, owner and publisher of the Norway Advertiser.

In a column published in the October 22, 1886 issue of the Oxford County Advertiser, Dr. Osgood N. Bradbury recalled the origins of the paper.

He did so, which pleased me exceedingly, as reading material of any sort was very scarce among the farmers of Oxford County at that time.The subscription salesman was Ira Berry and, true to his word, he did indeed start a newspaper.

The editorial, which billed the Advertiser as "A newspaper calculated for working men and their families," may well have been a jab at the rival Oxford Democrat.

In April, 1882, the printing offices of the paper, along with its list of subscribers, was lost in a fire that wiped out 10 structures along Norway's Main Street.

Having attended high school in Norway for a short time, he had returned hoping to make a home in the town and take up the newspaper trade there.

When Laura died, Sanborn's nephew, Ralph S. Osgood, originally of Lowell, Massachusetts, became editor and manager of the paper, having begun his apprenticeship in 1908 during summers spent with his aunt and uncle.

The leadership styles of the two men were recounted by Mearle M. Brown in a 1963 issue of the Oxford County Review: Two people could not have been more unlike than these two.

Fred Sanborn was brusque, fiery and turbulent; Ralph Osgood was quiet, almost retiring, but their ability in the newspaper business was almost on par.Osgood never married and, like his uncle, had no children.

Taking his cue from Sanborn's example, Osgood invited his nephew, Robert C. Sallies, of Weirs Beach, New Hampshire to summer in Norway and learn the newspaper trade, beginning in 1949.

James, a 1968 Pulitzer Prize winner for a series "Crisis in the Courts," team-written while he was Chicago Bureau Chief for the Christian Science Monitor, moved to New Hampshire in 1972, while he continued to write books and lecture around the country.

Once the Sun Media Group bought the paper, Ed Snook served as publisher, while editor A.M. Sheehan headed up the newsroom of two full-time reporters.