Follett, Foster & Company

City: Columbus

County: Franklin

State: Ohio

Follett, Foster and Company, publishers, printers, and book binders, consisted of Oran Follet and Frank E. Foster. The company agreed to publish the first permanent collection of the debates of the 1858 U.S. Senate race between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas. In 1859, the company's pressman, A. E. Senter, discovered that sorghum syrup was a superior material in making rollers for power presses than the previously used cane molasses. That year, the company possessed control of the Ohio State Journal.

David C. Mearns, "Abraham Lincoln Goes to Press: A Documentary Memorandum," Quarterly Journal of Current Acquisitions 9 (August 1952): 187, 188, 189-90; The Spirit of Democracy (Woodsfield, OH), 27 April 1859, 2:4; The Ingersoll Chronicle and General Intelligencer for the County of Oxford (Ingersoll, Ontario, CN), 6 May 1859, 1:5.