Staunton Spectator (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.
2,013 issues from 1849 to 1896, published in Staunton, Virginia, digitised for Chronicling America.
Located in in Augusta County, Staunton was the geographical center of Virginia prior to West Virginia becoming a state. Known as the “Queen City of the Shenandoah Valley,” Staunton is famed for its Romanesque Revival architecture and was fortunate to avoid burning during the Civil War. The Staunton Spectator and the Stauton Spectator and Vindicator have an intriguing history spanning nearly a century. Published weekly from 1823 through 1916, save for a few months, the papers covered much local news and witnessed dynamic changes during their tenure. Most notable were the splitting of the Union and the coming of the Civil War. The Staunton Spectator gained its name from Kenton Harper in 1823. Harper purchased the Republican Farmer from Isaac Collett, who had obtained the paper from its founder, William Lyford, shortly after its establishment in 1809. Harper was from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where he learned the newspaper business from his father who published The Franklin Repository. The Spectator was conservative, publishing from the political perspective of the Whig Party.
In 1848, Lyttleton Waddell and his nephew Joseph Addison Waddell purchased the Staunton Spectator. In his memoir “Home Scenes and Family Sketches” J. A. Waddell wrote, “my efforts to instruct and entertain the readers of the Spectator were certainly incessant and untiring.” Waddell also commented on the management of the paper: “For a full year, Lyttleton and I did all the job work for the…
- 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