Tag Archives: vermont newspapers

150 YEARS AGO: “The Dedication of Gettysburg Cemetery,” The Caledonian, Nov. 27, 1863

The Library of Congress picked an article from The Caledonian (St. Johnsbury, VT) to commemorate the event:

On Nov. 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln presided over the dedication of a new National Cemetery at Gettysburg, PA, site of one of the most destructive battles of the Civil War (see the Chronicling America Topics Page on the Battle of Gettysburg – https://www.loc.gov/rr/news/topics/gettysburg.html – to explore further). The Caledonian (St. Johnsbury, VT) joined other newspapers across the country in describing the events of the day for its readers, including reprinting Lincoln’s now famous speech beginning with “Four score and seven years ago…” The speech was described as “a perfect gem,” “unexpected in its verbal perfection and beauty….” Read more about it!

Behind The Scene: Production Update of November 2013

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Recently, VTDNP workspace received the rest of the microfilm reels to be digitized from our vendor. Approximately 76 reels of historic Vermont newspapers are ready to be digitized. These titles can be found on the bottom of this page. Please note that we pair master negative microfilm reel with its duplicate negative side by side. We also will add working microfilm copy (the ones stacked on top of the reels) for quality inspection.

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Also, we have received the digitized files of Cronaca Sovversiva. Please scroll down to see one version of their illustrated mast heads. We’ll keep you updated when the title have been ingested into Chronicling America‘s database. Grazie!

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Cronaca Sovversiva masthead from Saturday, January 7, 1905. Year 3 Number 1.

A Spectral Story: Queen City Cotton Mill Ghost

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“Burlington’s Ghost.” From the Vermont Watchman, November 28, 1900.

Happy Halloween, or as the historic newspapers have it, happy Hallowe’en, from VTDNP!

Halloween is today, and thus, it’s appropriate to share a ghostly tale that captivated Burlingtonians at the turn of the twentieth-century at the Queen City Cotton Mill on Burlington’s waterfront. Dozens of people attested to witnessing the apparition of a recently-deceased mill worker, Marie Blais, around the premise of the property.

Marie was hit by a train in June of 1900 at the Lakeside railroad crossing, and was killed immediately.

By that fall, stories of the female mill ghost became prevalent–the lights of the trains would flicker when passing over where Marie was killed, and people attested to seeing visions of the girl near the railroad tracks and of her working at her old loom in the mill at night. Some even attested to hearing screams near the track. Continue reading A Spectral Story: Queen City Cotton Mill Ghost →

Growing Fields, as seen in the historic newspaper the Vermont Farmer

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“In Vermont the hills are source of fertility to the bottom lands, and will be forever. The valley of the Nile was referred to. The same process is going on here. We want farmers to feel that farming is the best profession, and Vermont is the best state to farm in.”  (From the State Board of Agriculture, Manufactures and Mining meeting notes published in the Vermont Farmer, February 18, 1876, p. 1)

Farming has long been an established part of Vermont culture, economy, and community, and this is clearly demonstrated in the publication of the Vermont Farmer from 1870 to 1877 in Newport, Vermont.  As a supplement to VTDNP’s contribution to the newest exhibit up at UVM Bailey-Howe Library, “Growing Fields,” we thought we would share a little more about the Vermont Farmer, a historic Vermont newspaper that certainly testifies to the notion that Vermonters in the past, as in the present, have deep roots and interest in agriculture as a livelihood.

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The Vermont Farmer was, as its banner indicated, “an agricultural and family newspaper for the ruralists of the Green Mountain State.” Published weekly, it included a myriad of topics for the farm family in Vermont in the late nineteenth century, including news about fairs, markets, politics, strategies, technology, and more. People from all over Vermont subscribed, wrote, read, and contributed to the Vermont Farmer; at its height, over 3,500 people were subscribed.

The newspaper covered all kinds of farming, including, as shown in this advertisement from 1875, maple sugaring. It thoughtfully addressed agricultural topics ranging from maintaining bee hives to the varied benefits of different types of cows.

Of particular interest, the newspaper, as its banner indicates, made an effort to include materials of interest for all members of the farm family. In most issues of the paper, a “Ladies’ Department” column offered poems, stories, and advice for the farm wife and daughter on the farm. In the clipping to the left from 1874, a poem sent from woman in Waterbury Center, Vermont, demonstrates her clear preference for gingham over ruffles as the ideal apron for the “Farmer’s Wife.”

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The Vermont Farmer, through its advertisements and news columns, also sheds light on the developing technologies and strategies for farming. In the image below to the left, Gray & Sons from Middetown, Vermont, showcases a variety of machines for the farmer to enhance production on his farm. To the right, a new wheel rake, “The Gleaner,” is advertised in 1875 as indispensable for the farmer.

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This newspaper provides a rare glimpse into Vermont farming culture of the 1870’s. It is clear in reading any issue of this paper that it was strongly inclusive of all audience members in the Vermont farming community, from the young boy on the farm, to the farm wife, to the politician, to the farmer. You can browse issues of this fascinating newspaper online on Chronicling America.

We’ll end this post with some tasty pie and cake recipes from the October 28, 1871 issue (Let us know if you try them!): 

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by Karyn Norwood, edited by Erenst Anip

VTDNP News and Answers to Some FAQs

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We are pleased to announce that the VTDNP has applied for an additional 2 year round of funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities to digitize another 100,000 pages of historic Vermont newspapers from 1836-1922. With close to a million pages of newspapers from this era available on master negative microfilm in the state, we have more than enough great material to work with through this upcoming grant and beyond. This potential VTDNP Phase II grant will run from September 1, 2012 to August 31, 2014. The newspaper scans for Phase II, like Phase I, will be freely available to the public on the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America website. We should receive news about this grant in mid-2012.

I am often asked questions about the VTDNP–how it works, how we select titles, how long it takes to get new pages online, and others. I would like to take this opportunity to answer some of these questions:

1. I would like to read some more recent newspapers online–why do VTDNP titles stop at 1922?

Current copyright law classifies most published content before 1923 as “public domain.” Working with materials 1923 and later requires negotiating a copyright release from the owner of the material. The National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) wisely decided to avoid the sometimes byzantine realm of copyright law by limiting states’ selections to 1922 and earlier.

2. Where are the colonial and revolutionary era Vermont newspapers–why don’t you have any pre-1836 Vermont newspapers available?

To avoid duplication of commercially-digitized newspapers from pre-1836, the NDNP began selection with that year. One widely available database that specializes in these newspapers is America’s Historical Newspapers. If you are affiliated with a college or university, you may be able to access that database and others of this type through your library’s webpage. If you are not affiliated with a college or university, check with your local public librarian about how you can access these titles. One of the great advantages of Chronicling America is that it is freely available–because you have already paid for it with your tax dollars! For-profit sites limit access and therefore reduce usability. Fortunately, at 4 million pages and growing, Chronicling America dwarfs many of these  commercial databases.

3. I would love to see the Bennington Banner from 1904. Why does it take so long for it to become available?

Part of the purpose of the NDNP is to establish good practices and standards for digitizing newspapers. These standards are designed to ensure continued access to high-quality scans of newspapers, but they do take careful work to implement. Quick and dirty scanning may be faster, but the results vary widely, and are sometimes illegible. Worse, such scans my become incompatible with new software, or may become corrupted to the point that they are destroyed. The life of a digital object is notoriously short–as little as 5-7 years by some estimates. NDNP standards are designed to avoid such catastrophic loss, and are designed to deliver the highest possible quality to users. NDNP standards are forward-looking in that the Library of Congress archives master scans and microfilm for each image in the program. This allows for future improvements in rendering and Optical Character Recognition (OCR).

4. What is OCR and why should I care?

OCR is Optical Character Recognition. OCR interprets characters from an image, allowing us to index terms from a newspaper automatically. This gives users the ability to search terms in the images. On Chronicling America, you can search an issue, a title, a state, or the entire collection of over 4 million pages for your terms. It is a powerful and convenient search tool, all made possible by OCR. As you can imagine, OCR is not 100%. So when you are searching, be aware that some pages may not show up that have your search terms on them. OCR is always improving, but image quality is what determines the OCR engine’s ability to “read” the pages. Sometimes the only copy available of a title is not so great, but if it is historically important, it is worth inclusion even if it has condition issues.

5. I would like to see my local paper on Chronicling America. How do you choose what titles to digitize?

The NDNP works with an advisory board made up of 11 historians, librarians, museum directors, and journalists who are all well versed in historical Vermont newspapers. We select titles for digitization based on the availability of a title and the recommendations of our advisers. Not all 19th and early-20th century newspapers have survived, and not all that survived are available on master negative microfilm. The NDNP requires that we digitize from exiting microfilm. This maintains high image quality at a relatively low cost for digitization.

I hope this has enhanced your understanding of the VTDNP and the work we do. Please contact me at tmcmurdo@uvm.edu if you have more questions or would like clarification on any of these points.

– Tom McMurdo, VTDNP Project Librarian