The Marlborough Express was set up by the printer, journalist and editor Samuel Johnson and his brother Thomas.
They arrived in Blenheim in April 1866 and intended to set up weekly that served all of Marlborough Province, in opposition to the parochial papers serving Blenheim (Wairau Record) and Picton (Marlborough Press) already.
It remained in the Furness family until 1998, when it was acquired by Independent Newspapers Limited (INL).
[2] The paper made headlines nationally in 2013 when it published a cartoon by Al Nisbet about the Government's introduction of food in schools that was widely criticised as "racist".
[9] The Marlborough Express was one of the first digitisation projects of The Preserving Local History and Educational Trust (Te Pupuri I Nga Hitori o Te Rohe Trust), with the charity preserving issues from 1921 to 1943.