The Essex Record

Patrick Gammie Laurie arrived from New Pitsligo, Scotland to Canada in 1842. He married into a newspaper family, his wife, Mary Elizabeth Carney, was daughter of the owner of the Sydenham paper. Laurie would later own the Owen Sound Times for four years before arriving in the Essex County area and working as a printer in Windsor and Detroit. He purchased the Essex Record in 1861 and sold the newspaper to Alexander Cameron in 1869.

The Record was a victim of a fire one year later and would be restarted and passed along to Stephen Lusted in 1877, who had extensive newspaper experience in Woodstock, and then to the Barr family, James and John, who had worked at the Detroit Free Press. By 1890, the newspaper was owned by Archibald McNee, who would partner with John A. McKay to rename and establish the Essex Record as the Windsor Record.

Essay prepared by Art Rhyno