Abilene’s oldest existing business institution is the Reporter Publishing Company, started by C.E. Gilbert, whose first newspaper was printed on June 17, 1881, three months after the town was founded. Soon after publication began, a fire destroyed several buildings in town, including Gilbert’s office, and he rode the train to Baird, 21 mi. E, where he used borrowed presses to publish an extra edition about the blaze. Two other Abilene papers began in the 1880s: part-time preacher W.L. Gibbs started the Magnetic Quill in 1882, and three years later Gilbert’s printer, James L. Lowry, began the Taylor County News, with one early edition covering a duel between Gilbert and Gibbs in which both survived. Later owners of the Reporter included Dr. Alf H.H. Toler, John Hoeny, Jr., George S. Anderson, and Marshall Bernard Hanks, a former delivery boy for the paper who served as publisher from 1906 to 1948. In 1911 the Reporter bought the News, producing the present name, and Hanks later joined with Houston Harte of San Angelo to form the Harte-Hanks Organization, a national communications firm that includes the Reporter-News.