Virginia Free Press (Charlestown, Va. [W. Va.])
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
3,218 issues from 1832 to 1915, published in Charles Town, West Virginia, digitised for Chronicling America.
Few papers in Charles Town had the longevity of the Virginia Free Press. It began as the Harpers Ferry Free Press in 1821 and subsequently became the Virginia Free Press in 1824. The Virginia Free Press merged with another local paper, the Farmers’ Repository, in 1827. Five years later, the Virginia Free Press and Farmers’ Repository dropped the second half of its name. The senior editor, John S. Gallaher, and his successors published the Virginia Free Press until 1916. Upon its discontinuation, the Shepherdstown Register admitted that it was “sorry to see the passing of this good old weekly.” The Virginia Free Press had been a staple of West Virginia publishing for nearly a hundred years.
Gallaher had a career that was only surpassed in duration by the paper itself. “On the 4th of April 1809, sixty-two years ago, I entered the office of the Martinsburg Gazette … as an apprentice. What changes since then!” he cried. “Millions of people, born since that day, have gone down to the tomb, and millions more are fretting to get food and raiment.” Gallaher wrote in the troubled times of Reconstruction. Suffrage for black men and the implementation of military districts in the South had raised the ire of Southern Democrats, including Gallaher’s relatives. His brother, Horatio, and Horatio’s son, William Wallace Beeler, deemed territorial governments “both wanton and wicked,” adding “[that] the Devil himself could not concoct measures more mischievous in intention and tendency than…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Charles Town, West 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