1873.
The Fireside Weekly, Spencer Tompkins, publisher, made its appearance July 26, 1873. It was a literary journal on the order of the Eastern “popular literature” papers, the Fireside Companion, Saturday Night, etc., but was not illustrated. Mrs. Annie Robertson Noxon filled its pages with stories, poems and sketches from her prolific pen. It failed to visit the fireplaces of St. Louis during the winter of 1873.
(From the Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri by Alexander N. De Menil, 1901).
