Le Messager (Lewiston, Me.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
12,074 issues from 1880 to 1958, published in Lewiston, Maine, digitised for Chronicling America.
Over 400 U.S. French-language newspapers and periodicals were published in enclaves of northeastern American cities between the 1830s and 1980s, chronicling the daily lives of francophone Canadian emigrants. These Franco-Americans established their own Catholic parishes and schools, businesses, and social organizations, in addition to their own tradition of journalism. Printing local, national, and international news, as well as social events and serial literature, Franco-American papers reflected the complexity of assimilation for these transnational communities, who often faced disdain from relatives back home and discrimination from new neighbors because of differences in language, religion, and class.
The most notable Franco-American newspaper was Lewiston’s Le Messager, which began as a weekly in March 1880 and ran continuously for 88 years, longer than any other French-language newspaper in the United States. It was only Maine’s second French newspaper, after Biddeford’s L'Emigré Canadien, which lasted just six weeks in 1870. Catering primarily to the migrants working in the textile and shoe industries of the Androscoggin River Valley, Le Messager's readership extended beyond Maine and today remains a historical touchstone for Franco-Americans throughout the Northeast.
Le Messager was founded by Louis J. Martel, a prominent local physician and statesman, and Joseph D. Montmarquet, a New York newspaper proprietor with ties to Worcester’s French newspaper, Le…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Lewiston, Maine, United States
- 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