Keowee Courier (Pickens Court House, S.C.)

• 1849–1927
• Newspaper

Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.

2,458 issues from 1849 to 1927, published in Pickens, South Carolina, digitised for Chronicling America.

The Walhalla Keowee Courier (1849-present), a weekly newspaper, has served the residents of Oconee and Pickens Counties in South Carolina for over 160 years. Its very name, an allusion to the Cherokee Indians, speaks to the region’s rich history (the town of Keowee, or “Place of the Mulberries,” was once the capital of the Lower Cherokee Nation). To its readers, the Courier is an institution and remains a source of community pride.

Elliott M. Keith, Jesse Ward Norris, and William H. Trimmier established the Keowee Courier; the first issue appeared on May 18, 1849. Its masthead contained a quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou can’st not then be false to any man.” A one-year subscription cost $1.50. In 1853, Robert Anderson Thompson, who had previously worked for the Laurensville Herald and Pendleton Messenger , took ownership of the Courier. Thompson was involved with the paper for 45 years, serving as associate editor, editor, and sole proprietor at various junctures. His conservative, pro-secession views influenced its editorial tone (in 1860, he served as a delegate to the South Carolina Secession Convention).

The Courier suspended publication only once, during the Civil War. On March 15, 1862, proprietor Robert Young announced, “With this issue ends the publication of the Keowee Courier … should fortune smile on the Southern Confederacy, the publication of the Courier will be resumed at the end of…

Genres

News

Published in

Pickens, 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