The Osceola Times (Osceola, Ark.) 1870-Current
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,683 issues from 1873 to 1927, published in Osceola, Arkansas, digitised for Chronicling America.
In the late 1800s, visitors of Mississippi County, Arkansas opined that only one settlement in the county could properly be called a town, and that was Osceola, the county seat. Osceola is on the Mississippi River north of Memphis, Tennessee, on the northeastern edge of Arkansas. It was an important trade center as steamboats stopped there on their way between the major ports in Memphis, Tennessee and Cairo, Illinois. When Osceola was incorporated in 1853, it had 250 residents and few businesses. There were, however, many farms on the surrounding fertile farmland. By 1890, the town boasted 1,000 residents and dozens of businesses. The citizens were noted as consisting of many college graduates, making Osceola a center of “refinement, culture, education and taste,” atypical for a town of that size.
In 1870, James B. Best, John Oscar Blackwood, and Leon Roussan founded the Osceola Times, the first newspaper in Osceola. It was a locally focused, Democratic paper ranging from two to eight pages. It was published once a week with a circulation of around 400. In addition to their newspaper work, Best was the circuit clerk, Blackwood a prominent attorney and later member of Congress, and Roussan was elected the first mayor of Osceola in 1875. By 1871, Best had left to work in real estate, leaving Roussan and Blackwood as the editors and publishers. In 1873, Blackwood left, and Roussan became sole owner and editor.
Roussan’s newspaper career started after he finished the basic…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Osceola, Arkansas, 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