The Kellenberger Room: News in a Nutshell

Masthead of the Daily Nut Shell.

by John B. Green III

Scores of newspapers have been published in New Bern, from James Davis' North-Carolina Gazette of the 1750s to the Sun Journal of today. One of your blogger's favorites is a curious little paper called the Daily Nut Shell. I say "little" because it originally measured just eight inches by eleven inches although later issues were slightly larger. Edited and published from 1875 to 1883 by George E. Pittman, Confederate veteran, city councilman, and Freemason, its columns were filled with the usual newspaper fare: local news, advertisements, railroad and steamer schedules, legal notices, and obituaries.

The Daily Nut Shell, 5 April 1875, front page.

The doughty little Nut Shell competed against a crowded field of New Bern papers during its eight years of existence. These included the New Bern Journal of Commerce, the Newbernian, the New Bern Weekly Times and Republic Courier, the New-Bern Democrat, and the Daily Commercial News. Yet it persevered by promoting itself as the ideal advertising medium, being "cheap and spicy" and "read by almost every reading person of Newbern and many of the small towns near by" and that, by being physically small, "every advertisement that is inserted comes prominently before the reader."

The Daily Nut Shell, 5 April 1875, page two.

At one point the Daily Nut Shell disappeared in an 1882 merger with the Daily Commercial News only to return under its own proud standard in 1883, the last year of its publication. The following year saw the arrival of the New Bern Daily Journal, which, through twists, turns, and mergers, survives to this day as New Bern's Sun Journal.

The Daily Nut Shell, 5 April 1875, page three.

George E. Pittman continued in the newspaper business in Raleigh before moving to Washington, DC where he worked in the specification department of the Government Printing Office. He died in Washington in 1903 at the age of fifty-seven.