The Business of ‘Upbuilding:’ The Pilot Marks 100th Anniversary

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There was enough news going on outside of Moore County in the year 1920 to keep anyone well occupied.

The United States won more medals than any other country at the seventh modern Olympic Games that summer in Belgium. By August, the necessary 36 states had ratified the Nineteenth Amendment to grant women the right to vote.

Ohio Senator Warren Harding won that year’s presidential election by a landslide.

But Carthage newsman Stacy Brewer had his sights set closer to home. At the age of 36, he established The Pilot Printing Company in Vass and published the first issue of The Pilot on Nov. 26.

The company offered “printing that is pleasing,” and boasted the most sophisticated implements of the day for any and all printing jobs that might come their way.

After several years working at the Carthage Blade, later the Moore County News, though, Brewer was a newspaper man at heart. Every Friday morning he printed The Pilot newspaper in the hope of documenting, and contributing to, “the upbuilding of Vass and its surrounding country.”

There was much upbuilding to be done, though Brewer might not have known it. The seeds of Moore County’s current prosperity — its vibrant military community and regional medical hub — were just then being planted.

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