It’s a pretty sure bet that several members of my family have had printer’s ink in their veins as far back as the early 1930s.

 The literary talents of my aunt have contributed much to my columns here whenever I searched the archives of the Saturday Magazine Section of the Lewiston Evening Journal for her weekly contributions under the byline of Edith Labbie or Edith Dolan. I admired her writing about nature and Maine, but little did I know how deep her journalistic enthusiasm ran until I discovered two sheets of paper. They had been hidden for decades among the items probably tucked away by my grandparents at our family farm.

 Those yellowed and brittle pages, typewriter-size, were headed “The Art of Living,” Issue 1, Auburn, Maine, Monday, November 19, 1934.

 Each single-sided page had two neatly typed columns of advice and opinion, and one short section was addressed, “Dear Reader,” and signed “Respectfully yours, Edith Sargent.”

 She wrote, “I think it is fitting that you know the purpose of this paper. During the depression we have been tempted to forget about the higher ideals of life and merely exist in a monotonous trend.” She promised to work for improvement in every issue and said, “As I intend to go to college with the proceeds I would appreciate your patronage.”

 My Aunt Edith was about 16 years old when she launched her fledgling newspaper, which was priced at a nickel per copy. I have no idea how she printed them, how many pages she wrote, how many issues she produced, or how many copies she distributed.

 That discovery reminded me of my own experiences with the pleasures and pains of publishing. For me, I have a vague memory of a child’s printing kit with which I used tweezers to place tiny rubber letters into the grooves of a wooden block for inking and printing. At Edward Little High School I had the honor of editing the school newspaper, and a few years ago I put out a monthly business news publication.

 These columns fulfill my urge to examine the past, and I found that the earliest newspapermen of the Twin Cities probably kindled a creative flame from that same kind of spark that excited my aunt, my father, my brother, my wife and I.

 Details about some very early newspapers in Auburn and Lewiston were found in the 1872 book “History of the Press in Maine” by Joseph Griffin.

 He wrote about the first issues of the Lewiston Journal in 1847, when a hand press in a wooden building on Main Street turned out a few hundred copies of a newspaper that relied heavily on local news and was “politically neutral.” Before long, a “power press” was purchased in Portland and brought to Lewiston by Col. William Garcelon.

 That newspaper was the only survivor of 15 newspapers printed locally between 1847 and the history book’s publication. It’s the foundation of today’s Lewiston Sun Journal.

 Among the other local publications in the mid-1800s were The Democratic Advocate, the National Advocate, The Prohibitionist (1880), The Lewistonian (1867) and a paper called Farmer and Mechanic, which survived for about eight months in the late 1800s.

 Lewiston had a paper called The Gossiper around 1902. Lewiston publishers also put out a paper called the National Enquirer, but it surely was not like the one on newsstands these days.

The Auburn Clipper, the Auburn Bulletin, the Auburn Reformer, the Sunday Record, and the Greenback-Labor Chronicle were some of Auburn’s journalistic efforts.

 Mechanic Falls had the Androscoggin Herald for a few years beginning in 1867, the Mechanic Falls Citizen originating in 1877, and the Mechanic Falls Ledger from 1892 to 1910.

 Le Messager was the well-known French-language publication that was printed in Lewiston from 1880 to 1966. Internet sources also refer to L’Echo du Maine and La Republique.

 Those are just a few of the older news publications from the Twin Cities. In most cases, only a few issues remain.

 Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and a native of Auburn. He may be reached by sending e-mail to [email protected].