The Forest Republican (Tionesta, Pa.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
2,173 issues from 1870 to 1914, published in Tionesta, Pennsylvania, digitised for Chronicling America.
Tionesta, county seat of Forest County, lies in a wooded mountain wilderness at the junction of Tionesta Creek and the Allegheny River. Tionesta is purportedly an Indian word meaning either “waters meet” or “home of the wolves.” Forest County’s first inhabitants were Munsee Indians, followed in the 1790s by the first white settlers. Tionesta was settled in 1850, and the lumber trade flourished thereafter for more than a century. Wood was shipped as far as New Orleans, and towboats came up the Allegheny to pick up barges built at Tionesta. After the 1859 oil boom in adjacent Venango County, prospectors drilled in Forest County with some success, but lumber always was king.
The county’s first newspaper, the Forest Press, began in Tionesta in 1867; second was James W.H. Reisinger’s the Bee, starting on March 4, 1868. The Bee was published for only one year before being sold to the Republican Printing Company and renamed the Forest Republican on April 13, 1869. Edwin Wilson Smiley of Franklin was hired for a one-year term as editor. The four-page, seven-column issues comprised mostly “boiler plate”: national news, fiction, and humorous items purchased on plates ready for the printing press. Local news items and advertising ran mostly on the inside pages.
Russell J. McQuillen succeeded Smiley in April 1870, editing the Republican for seven months. He was replaced on November 1, 1870, by W.R. Dunn, a former Republican editor. “We again take charge of this paper,” Dunn wrote.…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Tionesta, Pennsylvania, 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