Gatesville Messenger seeks old copies to rebuild fire-lost archive

The fire that tore through Gatesville’s courthouse square did more than take out four historic buildings and injure three firefighters. It also erased a chunk of Coryell County’s paper trail when The Gatesville Messenger lost the cabinets that held bound issues dating to 1936.

That archive was never just newsroom clutter. For families tracing birth notices, obituaries, marriage announcements and legal notices, and for anyone trying to reconstruct older community life, those bound volumes were one of the few places where Gatesville’s everyday history had been kept in one place. The loss hit especially hard because the Messenger has served the town since 1887, documenting the milestones and public records that shaped county memory.

The fire was first reported about 6:50 p.m. Monday, March 16, and burned into the next morning on the west side of the square. Coryell County declared a local disaster after the blaze, which heavily damaged the historic downtown district. Officials later said there was no evidence of criminal intent.

Inside the Messenger building, the archive had been stored in specially built cabinets assembled during Marshall Day’s time as publisher and general manager, beginning in 1995. When those cabinets were lost, the paper lost nearly 90 years of local recordkeeping assembled for public use, not just sentimental value. Debbie Day later succeeded her husband as publisher in 2017, and the newsroom has been trying to piece itself back together ever since.

The paper resumed publication in digital form on April 3 for the April 4 issue and returned to print within about 18 days of the fire. Its office later moved to the north end of Gatesville Primary School after Superintendent Dr. Barrett Pollard offered space. Now the Messenger is asking residents to donate old copies so the archive can be rebuilt as fully as possible.

Some older Messenger material survives elsewhere. Bound books and microfilm dating to 1925 are held by the Texas Press Association, and more complete archives are housed at the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin. Even so, the loss of the 1936-to-2026 run leaves a local gap that matters in real ways, from settling family histories to preserving the record of deaths, marriages and civic notices that once appeared in the weekly paper.

The paper will mark its new start with a re-grand opening on Saturday, June 20, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. at its new office at Gatesville Primary School. Tours of the facility will be offered, along with family activities including bounce houses and water activities, while the larger work of rebuilding the archive continues.