By William “Skip” Deegans
Shown in this 1860-1880 photograph is the staff of the Greenbrier Independent newspaper. Seated is the editor, Col. Benjamin Franklin Harlow, who in 1866 along with his partner, Archibald Warren Folk, revived the weekly newspaper that ceased publishing during the Civil War. Harlow was born in Albemarle County, Virginia, and learned the printing trade in Charlottesville. When he was 18, he moved to Union and became one of the editors of the Farmer’s Friend, a weekly newspaper. From 1855 to 1858, he worked as editor of the Greenbrier Independent. He moved to Memphis in 1858 where he worked for the Daily Bulletin before moving back to Lewisburg to practice law.
Harlow enlisted in the Confederate Army in 1863, was captured and detained at Camp Chase in Ohio, exchanged in a prisoner swap, and finished serving out the war. In addition to being a newspaper publisher, Harlow was a farmer, mayor of Lewisburg several times, delegate to the Democrat National Convention three times, a state legislator, and an aid-de-camp to West Virginia Governor Emanuel Wilson for which he was granted the title “Colonel.” He was married three times and had 12 children by his first wife, Henrietta Clay Renick. He died in 1901 and is buried in the Lewisburg Cemetery behind the Old Stone Church.
Harlow sold the Greenbrier Independent in 1887 to Thomas H. Dennis and George T. Argabite. Under Harlow’s role as editor, the Greenbrier Independent was a conservative Democrat newspaper with very southern sentiments.
Sources: Greenbrier Independent, A History of Greenbrier County by Otis K. Rice, and The People of the Old Stone Cemetery: The Obituaries by Morgan Donnally Bunn.
