Newspapers Conquer America!

Ever dreamed you could visualize the growth of the Newspaper Trade across the country? Well our day has come. This video is based on data from the Library of Congress U.S. Newspaper Program, of which RIHS was a key participant during the 1980′s and 1990′s.

The Growth of US Newspapers, 1690-2011 from Geoff McGhee on Vimeo.

The first newspaper printed in the Rhode Island Colony was the short-lived Rhode-Island Gazette, printed in Newport by James Franklin from September 27, 1732 to May 24, 1733.  Providence’s first newspaper was William Goddard’s Providence Gazette, launched October 20, 1762 and ceased on May 11, 1763 “in the face of poor support and general indifference on the part of the people of Providence”  (McMurtrie, Beginning of Printing in R.I., 1935). The oldest still in print is the Providence Journal, evolved from the Providence  Daily Journal, and General Advertiser which was established in 1829.

The RIHS Library holds the largest collection in the State of Rhode Island Newspapers on microfilm and in hard copy.  Examples of newspapers in over ten different languages are in the collection representing the communities that have built the tapestry of Rhode Island’s people. Newspapers are still collected here at the Library today for posterity and for the research needs of future generations.

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ON THE SECOND DAY AFTER IRENE — ALL IS WELL (AND DRY) IN THE RIHS LIBRARY

As we enter Hurricane Season in Providence we count ourselves lucky to have seen Hurricane  IRENE pass by without causing much more damage other than trees down and power outages.  A look back in time to September 21, 1938 and we can begin to understand better what few people remember—the destruction and human suffering that came with the Hurricane on that date.

Front page of the Providence Journal Sept. 22, 1938

Our Library Newspaper Collection helps us understand the story of the Great Hurricane of 1938.  The Library is the repository for the Rhode Island Newspaper Project and houses a microfilm collection of almost every Rhode Island newspaper ever published.  To find out what newspaper titles exist for a particular time and place for Rhode Island and beyond search  Library of Congress Chronicling America  Historic American Newspapers.

A glance at the headlines in the Providence Journal  of Tuesday September 20, 1938, the day before the tragedy, shows how unprepared Rhode Island was for the approach of  the storm that was making its way towards Florida before heading up the East Coast.

 “FLORIDA CLEARS DECKS TO FACE HURRICANE WHICH MAY NOT COME, Weather Bureau Reports Severe Storm Sweeping Toward Coast with 75 Mile-an-Hour Winds Has Changed Its Course” –Providence Journal 20 Sept 1938

The next day, September 21, 1938, the front page of the Providence Journal announced what all the readers in the area already knew – nature can be overpowering and human life fragile in the path of a hurricane.

This extra edition of the Providence Journal was printed on the presses of a rival paper, The Woonsocket Call, because of the flooding and power outage in the City of Providence.

To research other monster storms in Rhode Island’s history, The Great Hurricane of 1815,  CAROL 31 August 1954 and BOB 19 August 1991, visit the RIHS Library to find newspapers, photographs, books, oral histories and film on your topic.  The image below is from a book in the Library’s Print Collection titled  The Complete Historical Record of New England’s Stricken Area September 21, 1938  published by The Woonsocket Call (Providence, RI, 1938).

Images from The Woonsocket Call photo essay of 1938

The 1938 photo caption reads as follows: [left] “EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. The storm took heavy toll of shipping as it piled up scores of ships like the Standard Oil Tanker shown here which lies battered and broken on the rocky Rhode Island shores – Providence Journal”  [right] “WARREN, RI. The ship “G. H. Church” snuggled between a gas tank and a telegraph poll. Note warning to boil water before using. –Providence Journal.”

NEXT WEEK  the Collections Blog will have details on Hannah Farber’s upcoming talk about Rhode Island’s maritime insurance industry—  COMMERCE, THE NATION AND THE ATLANTIC: American Marine Insurers in the Napoleonic  Era –  at 6:30 pm on 21 Sept 2011 at the RIHS Library, 121 Hope Street., Providence, RI.

– KPC

The Nukelace

From the 29 September 1961 Pawtucket Times:

Nineteenth-Century Twitter

Cultural critics have gone back and forth about the effect that technologies like text messaging or Twitter are having on the future of communication, asking, for instance, whether Twitter’s 140-character limit presages the death of the English language*. But, as is often the case, the new is already quite old; the 21st century didn’t invent brevity:

This is a detail from the “Social Salad” column, which ran on the front page of the Sunday Morning Transcript in Providence during 1883 and 1884. (To view a full-page image, click here.) This example is from the edition of 3 February 1884, and it includes brief, straightforward notices of society gossip (“Mrs. Wm. H. Gill, of West Hartfield is visiting friends in town.”) as well as aphoristic observations along the lines of those typically found in an almanac (“A warm kitchen is a safer abiding place on Sunday than a cold church.”).

The Rhode Island Historical Society is the repository for the Rhode Island Newspaper Project, and holds the largest collection of Rhode Island Newspapers in existence. For more information, visit the Library website.

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* See, for instance, Lily Huang, “The Death of English (LOL).” Newsweek, August 11, 2008.