The Utica Daily Press was started March 13, 1882, by about a dozen printers who had left the Utica Morning Herald. They met the day previous and determined to start a paper and made arrangements for doing the work at the job printing office of H. M. Greene at Nos. 3 to 7 Columbia street. Within a week it had fifteen hundred subscribers, and on the 25th of the same month it removed to No. 86 Seneca street, where it was published until May 1, 1883. It then removed to No. 7 Broad street and purchased its own outfit of type and presses. In February of that year a stock company had been organized which took over the business and has since conducted it. Colonel F. A. Eastman, former postmaster of Chicago, became its editor and served in that capacity for about two years. The press on which the paper was printed was a small double cylinder affair. The original paper was only seventeen by twenty-six inches in size and consisted of only four pages. George E. Dunham became connected with the paper as reporter in July, 1882, and served until 1885, when he became editor. Otto A. Meyer was made business manager and under his management the paper prospered. In the summer of 1891 the company bought a lot at No. 17 Main street and on it erected a building. This was occupied November 23, 1891, and as the location was close to the railroad station it had good advantages for successful business. The company remained in this location until 1905. During this interim the circulation of the paper and its business had greatly increased. The press had been operated by power generated on a gas engine. In the new building electric power was introduced and the paper was the first in Utica to use hydro electric power generated at Trenton Falls. The typesetting had been done by hand, but soon typesetting machines were introduced. Simultaneously stereotyping was put into use in making up the plates. A Hoe perfecting press was installed, from which the paper was printed. It was only a few years before the business of the paper had so increased that it had outgrown the new plant, and the Butterfield stables property almost directly opposite was purchased, with a frontage of one hundred feet. On this site, in 1905, a large modern building was erected at Nos. 310-312 Main street and it has been occupied since. A new and much larger perfecting press was installed, capable of turning out a paper of forty-eight pages and the number of typesetting machines was increased to fourteen. The capital stock of the company was increased to four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The number of employes housed in the establishment is about one hundred and twenty and there is also a staff of one hundred and twenty-five correspondents in the adjoining counties. The company purchased a new Hoe octuple perfecting press, which was installed in October of this year (1924) in a separate building.
The circulation of the paper has grown steadily and now covers the northern and central counties of the state. Mr. Meyer retired from the business management in 1911 and was succeeded by William V. Jones. George E. Dunham, who had been connected with the paper from its inception, and had been its editor since 1885, died October 29, 1922. He was succeeded by Paul B. Williams, on the 12th of November of the same year.