Cool Newspaper Websites

While doing background research for a project, I discovered some cool newspaper websites. Newspapers are among my favorite sources, and these sites not only provide access to many digitized newspapers but also allow for easy searching. Although not exclusively related to the Civil War era, there are plenty of newspapers from that time period included on these websites. The granddaddy is the Chronicling America project, a joint venture of the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Chronicling America features a vast array of digitized newspapers. There are a number of State ventures too including the California DigitalNewspaper Collection that has digitized 61,351 issues; that equals 544,474 pages. The Colorado Historic NewspapersCollection is a favorite of mine with 600,000 + digitized pages available for view. Stories about mining ventures, accidents, murders, the war in the East, and many other topics fill the pages of Civil War era Colorado newspapers, and of course the wonderful advertisements make for interesting reading. Historical research has entered a kind of Golden Age. If someone had told me twenty years ago that someday I could view images of Civil War era newspapers on my computer screen, I would have thought they were crazy!

The Importance of Newspapers

Letters and diaries immediately spring to mind when one thinks about the primary sources that historians use. Have you considered using newspapers in your research project? Unfortunately, I could not find many letters or diaries that related to the 28^th Texas Cavalry, the subject of my dissertation and then my first book. Newspapers, though, provided to be helpful. In newspapers I found casualty reports, lists of deserters, lists of men who had died of disease, and occasionally letters penned by soldiers to newspaper editors. Admittedly, newspapers are not the easiest resource to use. Researchers must often strain their eyes to read the print, and newspapers are distracting. When I read through newspapers I found myself poring over articles about sensational crimes in east Texas, perusing tidbits about other military units, and examining advertisements for various hair care products and miracle drugs.

Of course I am not the only Trans-Mississippi historian to note the importance of newspapers. William Garrett Piston and Richard W. Hatcher III commented in the preface of Wilson’s Creek: The Second Battle of the Civil War and the Men Who Fought It, “By reading each issue between April and November 1861 of every newspaper in Missouri, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Iowa, and Kansas for which copies are now extant, we uncovered a substantial number of letters, most of which have never been used by historians. Because the war was new, these letters contain a wealth of detail on soldier life often absent from later writings. Combined with extant material located in archives, they paint a vivid portrait of the battle and the men who fought in it” (p. xv).

Oftentimes Civil War era newspapers may be found on microfilm; some have been digitized and placed on the internet. Archives, historical societies, public libraries, and university libraries are prime places to find newspapers on microfilm. As an example, the Thomas J. Harrison Public Library in my community has all available Mayes County newspapers on microfilm.