The Valley Virginian (Staunton, Va.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,351 issues from 1866 to 1894, published in Staunton, Virginia, digitised for Chronicling America.
Staunton, located in western Virginia about sixty miles north of Lynchburg, served as an army depot, commissary post, and training camp for the Confederacy for much of the Civil War with Confederate generals Stonewall Jackson and Jubal Early encamped there at some point during the war. In 1864, though, the Union army broke the Confederate hold on Staunton and laid “waste to much of the town and miles of nearby railroad track.” It was in the war’s aftermath that The Valley Virginian began publication in Staunton on November 29, 1865.
Circulated every Wednesday by Alexander Menzies Garber, Jr. on the third floor of the Burwell building at Main and New Streets, The Valley Virginian was Staunton’s lone Republican newspaper. While the city’s population was only about 6,000 to 7,000 from 1860 into the 1890s, Staunton produced an impressive array of newspaper publications along with The Valley Virginian, including the Staunton Spectator and Staunton Vindicator, among others. Staunton was not a large city, but it was located at the crossroads of several railroads and home to the Standard Iron Works, several educational institutions, the Western Lunatic Asylum and the Virginia Institution for the Deaf, Dumb and Blind (now called the Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind), which might explain its prodigious press history.
Early in its life, the Virginian devoted ample copy reminiscing about the war and included reports from other newspapers like the Richmond Wig and the Richmond…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Staunton, Virginia, 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