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Re: Missouri CW Newspapers
In Response To: Re: Missouri CW Newspapers ()

Frank,

I appreciate the helpful hints by Bob and Craig since I also use surviving Missouri CW newspapers to assist with my research.

Allow me to add some points about MO newspapers of this period. It's sad that so few of them survive even on microfilm. The remnants are not easy to read, either. The few big city dailies of that time are helpful because they frequently quote from some of the little town weeklies whose issues failed to survive to present day. The surviving dailies to my knowledge include one from Kansas City and three from St. Louis. One of the St. Louis dailies is a German language paper. I don't read German, so I couldn't use it. I wonder if the German paper restricted its coverage to items more of interest to the German-American community in the St. Louis area, but that sounds like sour grapes, doesn't it?

The weeklies that survive are a mixed lot.

For southern MO those include some issues of a Rolla (Phelps County) paper and some issues of a Charleston (Mississippi County) paper. That's about it. Sad, huh? I haven't heard of hardly any issues of the Springfield (Greene County) weekly that still exist.

Western MO is more blessed with most issues of the St. Joseph (Buchanan County) paper, many issues of the Liberty (Clay County) weekly, many issues of the Lexington (Lafayette County), newspaper, and many issues of the California (Moniteau County) weekly still with us. As I wrote earlier, having most of the Kansas City daily issues survive also helps with west MO research.

The lion's share of what's left are a surprisingly large number of central MO weeklies. These include some issues of the Paris (Monroe County) weekly, a few issues of a Fayette (Howard County) newspaper, some issues of a Brunswick (Chariton County) paper, some issues of a Fulton (Callaway County) newspaper, and some issues of a Jefferson City (Cole County) weekly.

That's about it. If it weren't for the Paris and the St. Joseph weeklies there wouldn't be much left for north Missouri, either.

Of all those, the dailies of Kansas City and St. Louis are good for reporting or repeating news from around the state. Some of the weeklies like those of Columbia, Jefferson City, St. Joseph, and California are particularly useful since they reached outside of their immediate communities to report news of other parts of the state, too.

Much of the reason so few issues of these newspapers survived is that Missouri was actually a war zone for the entire duration of the war. If one side didn't like what a paper printed, they would visit the office and wreck the press. Partly because of this, the remaining newspapers learned to be more selective about what they chose to print. That tended to limit news coverage, as you may imagine. Further, newspapers in that day tended to "print first and ask questions later," to coin a phrase, so their accuracy and veracity suffered with the times, too. If you read something in a MO CW newspaper, be prepared to corroborate details from other sources unless you want to be caught up in the "folklore" business. That happens all too often to hardworking researchers who double check everything, and that trap awaits the careless with far greater occurrence. I'm sure many of you have noticed some of that "folklore" trap aspect that some of our Texas friends mention in their frequent laments in this forum. (Please don't chew on me for that remark, since I am a Texican, too, and fall into my own share of traps in this hobby.)

If any of you know of any existing copies of Civil War period newspaper still out on paper, please check with the State Historical Society of Missouri at Columbia to see if they would like to convert them into microfilm and make them available to researchers. Every once in a while you hear about somebody finding a few crumbling issues in a trunk in an attic or that somebody back when used to stuff inside a wall of a house. Saving more of those would help us keep more of that disappearing legacy of this terrible period of our history.

Bruce Nichols

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