History in the newspaper…from 1899 to 1914

The island's paper in 1899...

If  you’re a history nut, like I am, you’ll love this stuff – the archives of the San Juan Islander from 1899 to 1914 (when it went out of business) are now available online. Take a peek at what turn-of-the-century news looked like here.

(As Sharon mentions in her “About Us” page, the present San Juan Islander online news was named to honor the century-earlier paper – way cool, if you ask me.) Here’s more from their press release, from Laura Robinson:

State Library contributes San Juan Islander to Chronicling America
Site is home to 2.3 million historic newspaper pages

The San Juan Islander is among nine newspapers and more than 50,000 historic newspaper pages recently contributed to Chronicling America, making Washington State’s contribution to the program a total of 16 titles and 92,000 pages.

From the paper....

Chronicling America is a project of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.

Originally published as The Islander in 1891, the San Juan Islander changed hands several times over the years. After the Culver brothers purchased the paper in 1896, they declared their membership in the Republican Party and changed the name of the paper to the San Juan Islander in 1898. As the inhabitants of the region were mostly fishermen and farmers, much of the paper was devoted to news of farmers’ cooperatives, commodity prices, new agricultural production methods, and the movements of shipping vessels. The paper was eventually sold to John N. Dickie of Seattle in 1913 and ceased publication in 1914. People can read and research issues from this and other newspapers around Washington and U.S. for free at chroniclingamerica.loc.gov.

“These historic newspapers are a rich resource for historians, genealogists and other researchers,” said State Librarian Jan Walsh. “They provide names, dates, images and tell the story of a community or region in such a comprehensive way. They bring local history alive.”

From the ads....

Chronicling America provides free and open access to more than 2.3 million full-text searchable pages from 295 titles published between 1860 and 1922 in 19 states and the District of Columbia. The Washington State Library’s National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) grant was recently renewed through June of 2012, allowing more pages from other newspapers around Washington State to be uploaded over the next two years.

“It’s exciting to have this collection in Chronicling America,” said Deputy State Librarian Marlys Rudeen. “It will give researchers the ability to search across multiple collections of newspapers from various states at once.”

Part of the mission and purpose of the Washington State Library is to collect, preserve and make accessible to Washingtonians materials on the government, history, culture and natural resources of the state. Read more about the State Library.

Newspapers from Washington State currently included in Chronicling America are Cayton’s Weekly, 1917-1921; Colfax Gazette, 1900-1912; Colville Examiner, 1907-1922; Commonwealth  (Everett), 1911-1914; Daily Republican (Seattle), 1896; Leavenworth Echo, 1904-1922; Pullman Herald, 1888-1922; The Ranch (Yakima), 1894; The Ranch (Seattle), 1902-1914; Ranche and Range (Yakima), 1897-1902; The Republican (Seattle), 1896-1898; San Juan Islander, 1899-1914; Seattle Republican, 1900-1913; Tacoma Times, 1903-1918; Washington Farmer (Spokane), June 15, 1914; and Yakima Herald, 1893-1912.

For more information about Chronicling America, contact Laura Robinson, Washington’s National Digital Newspaper Program manager, at [email protected] or (360) 570-5568.

The Washington State Library is a division of the Office of Secretary of State. Visit the library’s web site at www.sos.wa.gov/library .

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