[2] In 1943, Ken and Faith Reynolds McClain had bought the Parsons Advocate which had been founded in 1896.
[1] In 1958, the newspaper undertook the reprinting of Alexander Scott Withers’ classic history, Chronicles of Border Warfare, as its first venture in book publishing.
When McClain retired in the early 1970s, his son-in-law and daughter, George and Mariwyn Smith, moved to Parsons.
George took over the printing company, and Mariwyn took over the newspaper, where she served as editor from 1971 to 2004.
These included the works of West Virginia poet laureate Louise McNeill, folklorists such as Ruth Ann Musick and James Gay Jones, bestselling volumes such as Howard B. Lee’s Bloodletting in Appalachia and Roy B. Clarkson’s Tumult on the Mountains, and reprints of classic local histories by W.C. Dodrill, Wills DeHass, Hu Maxwell, and others.