The Lancaster Ledger (Lancaster, S.C.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,699 issues from 1852 to 1905, published in Lancaster, South Carolina, digitised for Chronicling America.
The triweekly Lancaster News has delivered the news to the citizens of Lancaster County, located in the north-central part of South Carolina, since 1905. The News, like Lancaster County itself, owes no small debt to textile magnate Leroy Springs, the founder of Springs Mills (now known as Springs Industries). When Leroy Springs opened the first cotton mill in Lancaster in 1896, the majority of residents were scraping out a living as sharecroppers. In time, the textile mills would eclipse small farms as Lancaster County’s main avenue of employment, a trend that continued throughout the 20th century.
In the early 1900s, three newspapers–the Lancaster Enterprise, Lancaster Ledger, and Lancaster Review – competed for patronage by local residents. The semiweekly Lancaster Ledger, established by Robert Smith Bailey on February 17, 1852, was the oldest and most venerated paper. The weekly Lancaster Enterprise, launched in the spring of 1891, “presented an unusually handsome mechanical appearance,” in the words of the Yorkville (South Carolina) Enquirer. The weekly Lancaster Review, a continuation of the Lancaster Carolina Review, was founded sometime around 1880. According to Rowell’s American Newspaper Directory, the Lancaster Enterprise, Lancaster Ledger, and Lancaster Review each circulated fewer than 1,000 copies per issue.
By 1905, Leroy Springs and his associates had grown concerned that Lancaster lacked a stable newspaper. They constituted themselves as the Lancaster…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Lancaster, South Carolina, 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