In 1793, Robert Harper became the sole owner of the Western Advertiser and Chambersburg Weekly Newspaper, changing its name to the Chambersburg Gazette. In 1800, Harper changed the paper's name to the Franklin Repository and turned ownership over to his younger brother, George Kenton Harper, a Whig and a Mason. The younger Harper (whose son moved to Staunton and edited the Spectator) edited the Repository until 1840, when he sold his interest to Joseph Pritts, an active Whig who had been Chambersburg city treasurer from 1830-1832 (and would be again from 1842-1844), but also an active anti-Mason. By 1855, Col. A. K. McClure (a lawyer who would go on to represent Franklin County in Congress in 1858-1859) owned the Repository and sold it to the firm of Washington Crooks and Co., who merged the paper with the Franklin Transcript, another county publication, and changed the name to the Franklin Repository and Transcript. Sometime between 1855 and 1860, Crooks and Co. sold the paper to G. H. Merklein and Co., who continued to control the paper until 1861. In 1863, Col. McClure repurchased the paper along with H. S. Stoner, and the new owners dropped Transcript from the masthead, returning to the title of Franklin Repository. In 1864, the paper's offices were burned during the Confederate siege of Chambersburg, but the Repository quickly began republishing from the lecture room of the Chambersburg Presbyterian Church.

The Repository and Transcript, like its local competitor the Valley Spirit (and like the Staunton Spectator), was published on Wednesdays. Subscriptions cost $1.50 annually, and the paper printed eight pages, each six columns across. Having been a Whig paper for most of its existence, in the 1850s the Repository and Transcript began allying itself with the Republican party, and in 1860 endorsed Abraham Lincoln for president.

The Repository and Transcript tended to vary its layout from issue to issue far more than the Vindicator, Spectator, or Valley Spirit, making it difficult to generalize about where particular types of materials might appear in any given issue. The text below, therefore, specifically describes the issue of February 1, 1860, and notes points of comparison and departure from the February 1 issue of the Valley Spirit. When possible, reference is made to what additional kinds of material might appear in other issues in the space being discussed.