The Brighton Argus was founded in 1880 and existed under that name for the next 120 years, until it combined with the Livingston County Press to become the Livingston County Daily Press & Argus on Sept. 7, 2000.
I was honored to be the editor of the Brighton Argus for the last 14 of those 120 years. I remained at the paper for another few years after it went daily and became the Press & Argus, but I was the last-ever editor of the Brighton Argus.
So you can imagine how thrilled I was when the good people at the Brighton District Library announced earlier this year that EVERY SINGLE ISSUE of the Brighton Argus was now available totally online, totally searchable and totally free.
You can find the Brighton Argus archives by clicking here.
What this means to me personally is that every column, every article, every editorial I ever wrote is now available at the click of a button. I had clipped out a few things through the years and put them in manila folders that are sitting in a box in my garage, but now EVERYTHING is available online.
So if you want to go back and re-read every single one of my columns about Taco Bell, YOU CAN DO IT! It’s like Christmas all year long!
This is great news not just for me, but for anyone who grew up or lived in Brighton, Hartland, Pinckney, Hamburg or the other areas that the Argus covered. You can now type in your name or your kid’s name in the search bar and see every single article we ever wrote about your soccer game or Boy Scout event or swim meet.
You can also read 120 years of Brighton history as it was written. It’s glorious.
When I first heard that the Brighton District Library had put all the old Argus editions online, the first thing I did, naturally, was look for an ad we ran for Carter Lumber back on July 20, 1994. I hadn’t seen that edition since July 20, 1994, but I remembered that it contained the Single Greatest Typo in Brighton Argus History.
And there it was:
Ah, yes. Good old Shitmore Lake.
I remember July 20, 1994, like it was yesterday, because I came into work that day and the first thing I heard was, “Um, Buddy, we had a little mistake in the paper.”
Uh-oh. Sure enough, there it was on page 7A, right underneath a story about how contract negotiations were going in the Hartland school district.
The other thing I remember about July 20, 1994, is that the phone kept ringing off the hook (back when phones rang off the hook) as seemingly everyone who lived in Shitmore Lake – excuse me, Whitmore Lake – called in to let us know how much they didn’t appreciate this particular typo.
As you might expect, the fine people at Carter Lumber also called to voice their displeasure with our proofreaders.
Yes, it was a pretty bad day at the Argus office, but I took solace in knowing that it would all blow over quickly. I remember thinking that everybody would soon forget about this and they’d throw away their July 20, 1994, issue of the Brighton Argus and nobody would ever see the Shitmore Lake ad ever again.
Well, so much for that. Fast-forward 31 years later, and the Brighton District Library has seen to it that every typo we ever made – and every Taco Bell column we ever printed – will live for all eternity.
In all seriousness, thank you so much to the Brighton District Library for making this happen. You’ve made the Last Editor of the Argus very happy.
