In the 1840s, Jonesborough became the second hometown to the "Jonesborough Whig", a newspaper published by William G. "Parson" Brownlow, after Brownlow relocated the paper from Elizabethton, Tennessee, where it had been in publication for approximately two years. Brownlow and rival editor/Methodist circuit rider Landon Carter Haynes brawled in the streets of Jonesborough in May 1840. Over the next several years, the two newspapermen bashed one another in their respective papers, each managing at times to thwart the other's political ambitions. Haynes left the newspaper business in 1845, and Brownlow, who later was elected as governor, moved the "Whig" to Knoxville in 1849.