Several new newspapers were added to Virginia Chronicle in May, bringing the newspaper page count to over 4.3 million! Recent additions include community weeklies, additional school newspapers, Presbyterian newspapers, and new issues of papers from Fauquier County and Winchester. As a reminder: recently added titles can be found in the “New Arrivals!” list on the left side of the homepage of Virginia Chronicle.
We are very happy to announce that the years 1931-1963 of the Courier Record, published in Blackstone, are now on Virginia Chronicle. With the motto “Devoted to Progress, Sentinel of Truth, Pledged to Inform,” the Courier Record began publication in 1931 and still provides news for Southside Virginia today. Another long-running community weekly from Yorktown is also now searchable on Virginia Chronicle. Thanks to the permission of the publisher, the York Town Crier from 1978-2001 and its successor, the York Town Crier and Poquoson Post, published from 2002-2019, are now digitized. These two newspapers are an invaluable resource for the history of happenings in Blackstone and Yorktown.
The Virginia Newspaper Program (VNP) is also very grateful to the Fauquier Preservation and Heritage Foundation (FPHF) for lending several historically significant newspapers from that region for digitization. The list of FPHF titles includes new issues of the Fauquier Gazette, Flag of ’98, Blue Ridge Guide, True Index, Virginia Times, Winchester Virginian, Warrenton Virginian, the Record of Leesburg, the Piedmont Virginian, Jaguar Journal, and the Daily Old Dominion.
Among the many gems from FPHF’s collection is a May 27, 1862 issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer with the latest news from McClellan’s army and a map of the “Seat of War in Virginia.”
Big thanks must also go to the Union Presbyterian Seminary for lending newspapers from their impressive collection of Presbyterian publications for inclusion on Virginia Chronicle. Thanks to cooperative efforts with the Seminary, LVA has digitized additional issues of the Christian Observer, the Southern Religious Telegraph, and Visitor & Telegraph. A completely new Presbyterian title, the Religious Telegraph and Observer, is also now on Virginia Chronicle and a much more complete collection of the Central Presbyterian and its predecessors, Watchman of the South, Watchman and Observer, and the Watchman and Observer or the Central Presbyterian, will be available in the near future.
Three new African American school newspapers from the Middle Peninsula are also now available on Virginia Chronicle. The first, EMQ, was the student newspaper of Rappahannock Industrial Academy (RIA) and distributed during the 1930s and 1940s. Opened in 1902 with financial support from the Southside Rappahannock Baptist Association, RIA was the first school in Essex County to provide a high school education to Black students. RIA relied on the support of local Baptist churches and student fees to serve high school aged students living in Essex County and nearby counties until its closure in 1948. There are only two known copies of EMQ, one from 1937 and one from 1940, so the duration of the paper is unknown, but they are brimming with information related to the teachers, students, and activities of RIA. For more information about the RIA, check out Lillian McGuire’s excellent history of Essex County, Uprooted and Transplanted From Africa to America.
While there is a long list of wonderful high school newspapers in the Library’s collection, like EMQ, there are very few examples of elementary school newspapers, so it is exciting when one turns up. Three issues of the Rappahannock Central Gazette, published during the 1960s by Rappahannock Central Elementary in Middlesex County, are now on Virginia Chronicle. Rappahannock Central Elementary, part of the historic St. Clare Walker School Complex in Locust Hill, opened its doors in 1962 to provide a school for Middlesex County’s African American children. Edited by Tyrone Key, the Gazette contained messages from the principal, tributes to John F. Kennedy, reports on classes and sporting events, poetry, and detailed accounts of fieldtrips and graduation festivities.
Rounding out the Middle Peninsula trio of school papers is the Mirror, published by the students of Middlesex High School in Syringa. At its helm was Principal John Henry St. Clare Walker, the man after whom the St. Clare Walker School Complex was later named. Even though there are a precious few issues of these three school newspapers, they provide a glimpse at what was important to the young people who produced them. With lists of honor roll students, graduates, attendees with perfect attendance and new enrollees, they also contain numerous names of the students and teachers at the schools at the time of their publication.
Thirty-seven issues of another quality high school newspaper, this one from Petersburg, have also been added to Virginia Chronicle. The years 1963-1968 of Petersburg High Review, published by the students of Petersburg High School, can now be searched on the site. Find out who was voted best dressed at Petersburg High in 1963, learn who the homecoming queen was in 1964, or discover the district champs of 1966 with the newly digitized copies of the Petersburg High Review.
Visit Virginia Chronicle today for your newspaper research and keep a lookout for the many new titles coming to Virginia Chronicle soon!
