New Year’s Eve may have been the night everyone got pumped up to celebrate, but here at The Jessamine Journal, we are looking ahead to 2018 because of two amazing milestones on opposite ends of the timeline.

Jessamine Life, our new lifestyle magazine, will celebrate its first birthday in May. The Jessamine Journal will turn a distinguished 145 this year.

Only five more until the big one five zero!

We are still working out the details, but plan to host a community celebration to commemorate these important dates. We want to welcome back former employees, advertisers, longtime supporters and anyone else who appreciates the importance of having a weekly newspaper in a small community.

Keep your party hats handy and stay tuned for more information in the weeks to come.

Here is some of the history on The Journal I have found, but I welcome any local historians to help me fill in lots of blanks.

The Jessamine Journal was founded in 1873 by J.M. Parish of Mount Sterling and changed ownership several times during its first century.

It has been managed by many distinguished Kentucky journalists, including C.W. Metcalf, Col. H.M. McCarty and Edgar E. Easterly Jr., an Associated Press editor and press secretary to Gov. A.B. “Happy” Chandler in the 1950s. Easterly bought the Journal and The Jessamine News-Week in 1956 and merged them the following year.

In 1990, his son sold the weekly to Republic Newspapers Inc. of Knoxville, Tenn., and in 2001, the newspaper was purchased by Advocate Communications, a subsidiary of Schurz Communications. Boone Newspapers, Inc. took ownership at the start of 2016.

I would love to hear some great details to expand on this.

People often say, “I bet you miss the good old days when the paper had 10,000 readers.” Well, the truth of the matter is we are reaching more people each week than we have in the nearly 15-decade history of the newspaper. Are we doing it the same way? Of course not.

Our core mission is, and has always been, to professionally gather and disseminate information — news, advertising, sports — to our readers. We are doing that better than ever.

So, here’s to the first 145 years and many more to come.

Michael Caldwell is publisher of The Jessamine Journal and Jessamine Life magazine. He can be reached at (859) 469-6452 or by email at mike.caldwell@jessaminejournal.com.