In addition to Hannibal, the Courier-Post covers several other communities in Marion, Pike, and Ralls Counties, including the cities of Bowling Green, Center, Louisiana, Monroe City, New London, Palmyra, Perry, Saverton, and Vandalia.
[7] As the hometown daily newspapers of Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), the predecessors of the Hannibal Courier-Post were an important part of the future literary star's youth.
I have never been wholly disconnected from Journalism since; therefore, by my guess, I am dean of the trade in America.
Mark Twain.Twain's older brother, Orion Clemens, briefly owned the Hannibal Journal and Western Union, 1850-1853, employing Twain as a typesetter and contributor of articles and humorous sketches.
In the Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1, entry 29 March 1906,[8] Twain described his life as a printer's apprentice at the office of the "Hannibal Courier" (sic) and how a fellow apprentice was rebuked for abbreviating "Jesus Christ" to "J.C." when typesetting a sermon by Reverend Alexander Campbell.
As Twain described it: In that day the common swearers of the region had a way of their own of emphasizing the Savior’s name when they were using it profanely, and this fact intruded itself into Wales’s incorrigible mind.
It offered him an opportunity for a momentary entertainment which seemed to him to be more precious and more valuable than even fishing and swimming could afford.