1895-96 John H. Cullom Garland News

John H. Cullom, 17th president, filled the unexpired term of W.A. Adair. His family moved from Nashville, Tenn., to Texas in 1877. In 1879 they moved to Haught’s Store, later Lawson, where he became the Haught’s Store correspondent of the Mesquite Mesquiter.

He set type five days a week, and clerked in the store on Saturday. He worked there three months and then returned to the farm, but was called back to Mesquite in 1882 when Judge Thomas F. Nash, then a member of the Legislature, leased the Mesquiter.

Cullom then worked on the Southern Mercury, a Populist weekly newspaper owned and edited by E.G. Rust. He later joined the Duck Creek News, but eventually a dispute between two factions helped establish the town of Garland and he moved the office there and called the paper the Garland News.