How It Began   

Judge William Cooper's supporters, Federalists all, sought to create "The Village of Cooperstown" in 1807. But Cooper's archrival, Elihu Phinney, the Whig publisher of the Otsego Herald, foiled him, and the new municipality was named "The Village of Otsego" instead.

Nursing a grudge, Cooper, Cooperstown's founder and father of novelist James Fenimore Cooper, launched the Impartial Observer on October 22 of the following year, just in time to weigh in on that November's elections. Since the impetus for the newspaper was purely partisan, the name became the butt of jokes in local taverns and it was soon rechristened the Cooperstown Federalist.

Cooper died in 1809; the village was renamed "Cooperstown" three years later. In 1818, the newspaper, under Publisher and future Congressman John H. Prentiss, underwent a political conversion and was renamed the Freeman's Journal. Supporters of Thomas Jefferson, founder of the Democratic-Republican Party (today's Democrats), were then known as "freemen."

Prentiss owned the newspaper for half the 19th century; Samuel Shaw — "Be Just, and Fear Not" was his motto — did so in the second half.

The 20th century brought consolidation, as the Cherry Valley Gazette, the Richfield Springs Mercury and other newspapers were acquired.

For a period, the company published both the Democratic Freeman's Journal and the Republican Otsego Farmer. The story goes that when one editor went on vacation, the other editor would write two editorials, from each party's point of view.

After a fire destroyed the newspaper's building and pressroom at Main and Pioneer in 1964, the weekly went through a half-dozen owners in the last three decades of the 20th century. Jim and M.J. Kevlin bought the paper on May 30, 2006.

— J.K.