The VTDNP is part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a joint project between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress. The NDNP is approaching five million pages of historic newspapers from 26 states, with new states and titles being added. The Chronicling America main page my be seen by clicking here. If you want to see all of the available Vermont titles, click here. We have lots more content in process and will be adding titles all summer, so if you add these links to your bookmarks, you can often expect new content when you visit the site.

If you have ever spent much time looking through 1920s and early 1930s US newspapers you may have encountered a comic strip, “Mickie the Printer’s Devil.” This widely syndicated comic strip drawn by Charles Sughroe shows episodes in the life of Mickie, a printer’s apprentice. It was common for boys to learn the trade of printing as an apprentice pretty much since the advent of the art. Though the origin of the term is uncertain, such boys were called “printer’s devils.” Printer’s devils would do all manner of tasks in a printing office, including setting type and sweeping up. A number of famous people were printer’s devils, including Ambrose Bierce, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Mark Twain.

Here is a strip from the October 7, 1921 edition of the Middlebury Register in which Mickie mentions that Presdient Harding was a printer’s devil as well (click the strip to get a larger version):

The strips often depicted what daily life was like for a small town newspaper printer, showing conflicts with subscribers, amusing happenings, and the demands of running a print shop. This, no doubt, appealed greatly to small publishers, and explains Mickie the Printer’s Devil’s wide syndication. The strips below are from the 1920 and 1921  Middlebury Register (click the strip to get a larger version):

Mickie is always drawn with ink up to his elbows, and appears to be ready for just about any event in the print office.

The strip ran into the early 1930s. you can look for strips from 1920-1922 in the pages of Vermont newspapers like the Middlebury Register. These issues of the Middlebury Register are still in process, but they will be available on Chronicling America soon. This is just one more interesting item in our growing collection of online Vermont newspapers. At just over 72,000 pages from 1836-1922, growing monthly towards 130,000 Vermont newspaper pages, and closing in on five million pages total on Chronicling America, there are countless other interesting items in the collection. Enjoy!

Tom McMurdo

The VTDNP is part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a joint project between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress. The NDNP is approaching five million pages of historic newspapers from 26 states, with new states and titles being added. The Chronicling America main page my be seen by clicking here. If you want to see all of the available Vermont titles, click here. We have lots more content in process and will be adding titles all summer, so if you add these links to your bookmarks, you can often expect new content when you visit the site.

This week the Vermont Digital Newspaper Project added close to 10,000 more pages to the Chronicling America database, bringing our total to over 72,000 Vermont historical newspaper pages available.

The Montpelier Watchman & State Journal issues are now available from 1836-1888, with issues through 1910 available with our next batch upload. These issues add to the wealth of historical newspapers we have already made available:

Windham County Democrat: 1837-1853 (scattered issues)

Rutland Daily Globe: 1873-1876, with 1877 forthcoming

Vermont Transcript (St. Albans): 1864-1869

Vermont Phoenix (Brattleboro): 1836-1922

Burlington Free Press (weekly edition): 1836-1920

Rutland Herald: 1836-1854

Vermont Farmer (Newport, St. Johnsbury): 1872-1877, with 1870-1872 forthcoming.

We have several more batches in various stages of completion, and we are well on our way toward our project total of nearly 130,000 pages. This spring and summer, we will be adding more issues to Chronicling America from the Middlebury Register from 1837-1922, the Spirit of the Age (Woodstock, VT) from 1840-1909, the Caledonian (St. Johnsbury) from 1837-1884, and the Bennington Banner from 1888-1895, and 1903-1904.

There are so many historical treasures to be found in the pages of these newspapers. We recently published a tutorial that walks one through several types of searches in Chronicling America, and includes a number of interesting images from the pages of these papers. The tutorial, “Finding Great Stuff in Chronicling America and the VTDNP” can be found here, as part of our recently added Presentations and Tutorials page on the VTDNP website. On the Presentations and Tutorials page you can find information about the history and formation of the project, instructio!
nal information for searching, and technical information regarding the digitization of newspapers. We hope that this will be a useful resource for genealogists, researchers, and others interested in the VTDNP.

Happy searching!

Tom McMurdo

We are very pleased to have a slew of great new material available online this week. There are now over 62,500 pages of freely available, keyword-searchable, historic Vermont newspapers online at Chronicling America here. These titles are part of the now approximately 5 million ( ! ) pages freely available on Chronicling America of newspapers from 1836-1922.

One title we are particularly happy to make available is the Windham County Democrat, which was published in its latter years by Clarina Nichols. Born in Vermont, Clarina Nichols was a major figure in the 19th century women’s movement. It was very unusual for a woman to edit a newspaper in the 1840s and 1850s. Clarina was held in high esteem by many of her male counterparts. Unfortunately, very few issues of the paper survived. We have put the first 22 up, and hope to add 18 more next year.Still, despite the paucity of issues, the historical importance of the title makes what we have worthwhile.

Another title sure to be of interest that is now available is the Vermont Transcript from 1864-1870. This title covers gaps in the St. Albans Messenger, notably issues round the St. Albans Raid of Oct. 19, 1864, and the Fenian invasion of Canada staged at St. Albans in early June 1866. the St. Albans Raid was the northernmost engagement of the Civil War. Here is a clip from the Oct. 21 issue (the issue is available here):

Here is a clip from the Fenian invasion from the June 8, 1866 edition (full issue available here):

The recent batches now available include the excellent Rutland Daily Globe 1873-1876, nearly complete the Vermont Phoenix from Brattleboro 1836-1922, and start the Watchman & State Journal from Montpelier, 1845-1855 of a run that will encompass 1836-1910. Check out all of those titles and more.

Tom McMurdo, VTDNP Project Librarian