The Helena Independent (Helena, Mont.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
2,139 issues from 1889 to 1894, published in Helena, Montana, digitised for Chronicling America.
Founded in Deer Lodge, Montana, on October 12, 1867, the Weekly Independent newspaper moved to Helena, on March 27, 1874, after a fire at the Rocky Mountain Gazette provided an opportunity for another newspaper in Helena. The first publishers of the Independent, James C. Kerley and Addison Smith, had moved to Helena from Deer Lodge, where Smith served as a county treasurer and a travelling correspondent for a Deer Lodge paper. After moving to Helena to run the Independent, Smith acquired an interest in Kleinschmidt & Co., a Helena merchandising company. After Smith left the newspaper, Kerley added Hugh McQuaid and Lucien LaCroix to the management.
In 1894, the Independent took up the cause of William Andrews Clark and his bid to make Helena the state capital in a run-off election against Marcus Daly’s Anaconda, Montana. Clark and Daly constituted major players in the “war of the copper kings,” an ongoing struggle to control Montana’s copper industry. The Independent enumerated the dangers to Montana politics of locating the state capital in Daly’s smelter town of Anaconda. Voters ultimately chose Helena in a very closely contested race. The dedication of the Independent to Democratic politics can be linked in part to John S.M. Neill, a Minnesota transplant who campaigned vigorously for President Grover Cleveland and later secured a U.S. Senate seat for William A. Clark. In the early 1890s, Neill became the Independent‘s business manager and encouraged Clark’s financial…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Helena, Montana, 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