From a great book on our Local History shelves, “Early Days in a College Town,” I found the story of The Crawfordsville Record, our first newspaper in town. Frank Mills, the author of “Early Days,” tells us that he found some copies of the first issue, printed just six months after his birth, in 1831, when Crawfordsville had only 500 inhabitants. He comments that the Record contained less than six inches of advertising, as opposed to later papers that contained mostly ads, and very little news.
The Record is available online through CDPL website, on the Services tab, then click on Local History, then Early Montgomery County Newspapers. Scroll down the list to find several other county papers. All of these old papers are also available on microfilm in our Local History Department.
A cursory glance through the February 8, 1834 issue of the Record shows us that the more things change, the more they stay the same! Martin Van Buren was the vice-president, and Daniel Webster was the senator who spoke with Van Buren.
This paragraph was from an article on the Bank of the United States. This event took place in U. S. Senate, where there was much to-ing and fro-ing from many senators about how the system was or was not working. This paragraph could easily be dropped down into any article about the Senate from the last over 200 years of our nation’s history!
While the online newspapers are not quite searchable yet, you may still be able to find jewels of family history hidden in there if you have a date for an event, such as this marriage. The marriage is between Mr. James M. Vangordan, of Butler County, Ohio, and Miss Lilee Jane M'Maken, of this county.
The property advertised for sale (one of the few ads in this paper)should be quite familiar to county residents. It would be the Yountsville property that eventually becomes the Yountsville Woolen Mill, in 1849 when Jacob Yount changed his carding mill into a woolen mill.
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