Read all abour it : free online Newspaper sources for 19th century America
Introduction The 19th century saw America’s greatest period of economic growth, exploration and expansion, as well as some of its most significant and dramatic events such as the movement West; the Civil War; Slavery; Immigration; Urbanisation etc. The same period also saw the rise of the popular press in America, and historians and other scholars now recognise the value of newspapers in providing a first-hand, detailed insight into all aspects of national life. Traditionally, access to this wealth of information was difficult, as the newspapers themselves were fragile or else were often in microfilm with poor indexes and often with poor reproduction. The situation changed with the advent of the Web and development of digitisation and software searching tools, which now allow researchers to pose new questions of these newspaper collections, which Commager saw as representing “ the raw material of history”. Commercial organisations have been quick to respond with a range of very impressive products. Readex now have significant collections eg their “Early American Newspapers Series 1 (1690–1876)” which is in the process of being supplemented by Series 2 and 3. Proquest offer their “Historical Newspapers Programme”, an ongoing project that digitises key newspapers dating from the eighteenth century to the present day, including “The New York Times”; “The Wall Street Journal”; and “The Washington Post”. Thomson Gale have the “19th Century US Newspapers Digital Archive” which has digitised content from the microfilm holdings of a wide range of newspapers, which were chosen with view to providing the greatest value to researchers and to give a detailed insight into all aspects of national life. However, such treasures come at a price and not all libraries are able to meet the asking price. There are a now a number of freely accessible resources, and what follows below is a discussion of just a selection of these. This is not an exhaustive list, rather an attempt to give a flavour of what is out there, and to indicate how useful or otherwise I found them to be. (When using these sites it is worth noting that in many cases, due to way the site is built, using your brower’s [Back] button will not have the desired effect. Also, the response times can be slow.) Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1841-1902) http://www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/eagle/ Coverage and Usefulness : Spanning sixty-one years, the “Brooklyn Daily Eagle” covers a seminal period in the history of America. As well as what was happening in Brooklyn/New York, it also discusses national events, making this an excellent primary source for a range of topics in American history, eg the Civil War, immigration, race relations etc. Approximately 147,000 pages of newspaper have been digitised, and both articles and advertisements are available. You can access the text either by date of issue or by keyword searching. Colorado’s Historic Newspaper Collection http://www.cdpheritage.org/ and click on link [Search Newspaper collections] Coverage and Usefulness : covers the early years of over 90 newspapers, including the “Rocky Mountain News”; “Boulder Camera”; and the” Colorado Chieftain”. There are over 150,000 pages covering 1859 - 1924, representing 30 Colorado cities
and 20 counties. Researchers can leaf through an issue page by page; search the database by topic; look at an individual article by itself or as part of the full page; search through articles, graphics, letters to the editor and ads; search a single newspaper, a group of papers or all papers. The site is being kept up-to-date and the helpdesk are very responsive to any queries.
Georgia Historic Newspapers http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/MediaTypes/Newspapers.html Coverage and Usefulness : offers searchable issues of three important historic Georgia newspapers, the “Cherokee Phoenix”; the “Dublin Post”; and the “Colored Tribune”, taken from the microfilm holdings of the Georgia Newspaper Project. Currently, your search terms are not highlighted in the results pages, nor can you retrieve them using the search tool in Adobe Acrobat, which means this is not nearly as easy to use as it could be, as a fair amount of determination is required to scan through a page of text looking for particular words. This reflects the fact that this resource was one of the early attempts at digitisation and was completed at a time when there were few models to draw upon and little sense of how users might use such a resource. Georgia Historic Newspapers are in the process of exploring methods and sources of funding for a new newspaper digitisation project which would deliver additional functionality and content, although as yet there is no firm timeline for when this will happen Harpweekly http://advertising.harpweek.com/ Coverage and Usefulness : allows you to look a small collection of advertisements from Harper's Weekly, one of the leading illustrated American periodical during the 19th century. You can also register for free online access to the index of all the advertisements from 1857-1872 Historic Missouri Newspapers Project http://digital.library.umsystem.edu/ and click on link [Missouri Historic Newspapers] Coverage and Usefulness : has digitised 14 newspapers from Missouri, with varying degrees of chronological coverage. Tiles include “St Louis Christian Advocate”18571879; “Phelps County New Era” 1875-1880; and the “Liberty Weekly Tribune” 18461883. You can browse or search, but be aware that pages can be very slow to load in, and can be of poor quality. However, there is interesting material here eg a search in the periodical “The Far West” (1836) shows up some advertisements for the sale of slaves. Historical New York Times http://www.nyt.ulib.org/ Coverage and Usefulness : coverage of the Civil War period from 1860-1866. Regrettably, there is no search facility and the text can be awkward to read. This particular project was halted by the New York Times themselves, so there is no possibility of the site being improved. Nonetheless, for anyone concerned with the Civil War, it remains worth a look.
Historybuff.com http://historybuff.com/ and click on the link marked [Online Newspaper Archives] Coverage and Usefulness : offers a small collection of articles from a range of 19th century publications, organised chronologically by decade. There is no searching and the actual number of available articles is quite small, so its usefulness is limited. Nevertheless, there is some interesting material eg the “New York Times” coverage of the battle of Gettysburg. Another section of the site (under Primary Source Material) has coverage from the “Columbia Centinel” and the “Massachusetts Federalist” of the Louisiana Purchase. Pennsylvania Civil War Newspapers http://www.libraries.psu.edu/digital/newspapers/civilwar/ Coverage and Usefulness : offers access to 17 periodical titles from Pennsylvania, which although part of what is called the “Civil War Newspapers”, in some cases go back to 1855 and in others up to 1874. The site offers keyword searching; boolean logic; search limiting eg to articles, pictures or adverts, although your initial search terms are not highlighted in the retrieved document . You can also choose to browse by title to see what issues are available. Utah digital newspapers http://www.lib.utah.edu/digital/unews/index.html Coverage and Usefulness : this site has digitised around 40 Utah newspapers, covering both the 19th and 20th centuries, eg there is a complete run of the Salt Lake Tribune for the 19th century, so this is potentially very useful. Search results are listed in alphabetical order by newspaper title, and within that by date: you can’t change this. Again search terms are not highlighted in the retrieved documents. Forthcoming Wyoming Newspaper Project http://www.wyonewspapers.org/ Coverage and Usefulness : this site aims to “make newspapers printed in Wyoming between 1849 and 1922 accessible in an easily searchable format”. As yet, there is no indication as to when this will be available. Further Sources of Information There is a useful directory, “US News Archives on the Web” at http://www.ibiblio.org/slanews/internet/archives.html which details those American newspapers which have an online presence, and for each title gives the chronological coverage and the cost (where this applies) to access. The University of Washington have an online guide to Digital Newspaper Projects and Resources at http://lib.washington.edu/mcnews/digital_projects.html which was used in the preparation of this article. There is another useful compilation from the British Columbia Digital Library at http://bcdlib.tc.ca/links-subjects-newspapers.html Conclusion As you would expect, the resources mentioned above do not in general offer the same functionality, scope, ease of use, and support as the commercial offerings from Readex, Proquest, and Thomson. They are perhaps best seen as “cheap and cheerful”, though not necessarily “cheap and nasty”. In general it is worth the effort of
seeking out and exploring them, as they represent a vital collection of primary source material for all civic, political, social, and cultural events in American life in the 19th century. As Arthur Miller once observed, “A good newspaper is a nation talking to itself”; you can now freely eavesdrop on some of these conversations.
Donald Tait, Glasgow University Library