Oxford Democrat (Paris, Me.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
3,659 issues from 1850 to 1921, published in South Paris, Maine, digitised for Chronicling America.
The Jeffersonian was a political newspaper published in Paris, Maine, by notable state politician, Hannibal Hamlin beginning in 1827. In 1833, Hamlin moved the paper to Portland, but not before training his apprentices George W. Millett and Octavius King in the trade. They used their knowledge to launch the Oxford Democrat, the longest published newspaper in Oxford County.
The Democratic Party in Maine urged Millett and King to start a regional newspaper. The two men purchased the Oxford Oracle from newspaperman Asa Barton in August 1833. They renamed the four-page weekly the Oxford Democrat and soon moved it from Norway to Paris, where it served for many years as the organ of the state’s Democratic Party.
In their second issue Millet and King printed this statement:
We must take the liberty to remind our readers that this paper was established here to support the cause of democracy in this county. We began without subscribers in compliance with a wish expressed from all parts of the county that such a paper should be put in operation here. We cannot continue without subscribers, and shall not. Whatever may be our zeal in the cause, we cannot live upon it.
They did receive the support of the community and published the Democrat for one hundred years until 1933 when it merged with the nearby Norway Advertiser. While Oxford County was sparsely populated and largely agrarian, it was home to over 25 newspapers from the late 1700s-1900s. TheDemocrat eventually changed its…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- South Paris, Maine, 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