Montgomery County Sentinel (Rockville, Md.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
5,138 issues from 1855 to 1963, published in Gaithersburg, Maryland, digitised for Chronicling America.
Matthew Fields commenced publication of the Montgomery County Sentinel as a weekly in his hometown of Rockville on August 11, 1855. Fields had learned the newspaper business as an apprentice at Rockville’s Maryland Journal and True American, published by Jesse Leach. Fields briefly was a partner with John Braddock, Jr. in publishing the Rockville Journal and Montgomery County Advocate in 1854 -1855. He was also at various times the Montgomery county sheriff and tax collector, and a Rockville town commissioner and postmaster. The Sentinel was a family business, and after Matthew died in 1871, his widow, Rebecca G. Fields, and their children, continued running the newspaper until her death in 1930 at the age of 100.
Although he began his career as a Whig, Matthew Fields transferred his loyalties to the Democratic Party, and his editorial positions championed the cause of the farmer and small businessperson. These interests were reflected in the paper’s extensive coverage of the annual Montgomery County Agricultural Fair. His partisanship included strong opposition to the Know-Nothing Party and its successor, the Republicans. He sided with the south during the Civil War, which led to suspensions in issuing the Sentinel from October 17, 1862 until November 7, 1862 and in the spring of 1864. On both occasions, the editor was arrested and held by federal authorities who objected to his war and political reporting.
The Baltimore Sun reported Matthew Field’s sudden, unexpected…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Gaithersburg, 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