Saint Mary's Beacon (Leonard Town, Md.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
2,380 issues from 1867 to 1921, published in Lexington Park, Maryland, digitised for Chronicling America.
St. Mary’s County, at the mouth of the Potomac River, was the founding location for the colony of Maryland in the 1630s. Established in 1845, the St. Mary’s Beacon, published weekly, traces its origin to the Leonard Town Herald, which was started by Francis M. Jarboe on December 13, 1839, in the county seat. Around 1845, the paper was rechristened the St. Mary’s Beacon, under the ownership of George Haydn, who had a reputation for literary interests. In 1852, Haydn sold the Beacon to George S. King, a local attorney, and three years later, John Franklin King acquired the paper from his uncle. The younger King had worked for Jarboe before completing a formal printing apprenticeship in the 1840s with John Murphy, one of Baltimore’s leading publishers.
The Beacon‘s conservative pro-Southern stance during the Civil War led to difficulties during John King’s tenure. The Beacon noted with approval local celebrations of the fall of Fort Sumpter and supported subsequent plans to prepare the county militia to resist federal authority. King’s co-editor James S. Downs was arrested and imprisoned for an editorial published in April 1863 entitled “The War on Women.” To criticize the treatment of Confederate sympathizers was considered treasonable, and the Beacon was shut down by federal order. A replacement newspaper, the St. Mary’s Gazette, filled the void from 1863 to 1865, reporting on the frequent arrests of local citizens for acts of disloyalty. Downs returned from prison and took…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Lexington Park, Maryland, United States
- Language
- English
- Collection
- Chronicling America
- Licence or status
- None stated by the archive
- Rights
- The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.
- Credit
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities
- Who can read it
- Teens profiles and older (placed by Invisible Network from what the archive says; archives give no ratings)
- Archive
- Library of Congress