Helena Weekly Herald (Helena, Mont.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
941 issues from 1870 to 1889, published in Helena, Montana, digitised for Chronicling America.
The Helena [Montana] Weekly Herald was established in 1867. From the beginning, Robert E. Fisk, editor of the five-column, eight-page weekly, gained a reputation for his feisty political rhetoric in support of the Union. Born in Ohio, Fisk had served as an officer in the New York volunteers during the Civil War. Prior to the war, Fisk worked for the New York Herald as a compositor. Fisk and his brothers established the Helena Weekly Herald in part to promote Republican politics in Montana, which was reflected in an early editorial in which Fisk characterized a Democratic rival as “a copperhead snotrag.”
The early pages of the paper followed both local and state politics, especially in 1874-75 with the decision to move the territorial capital from Virginia City to Helena. The Herald regularly published passenger lists for the steamboats at Fort Benton and reported on Indian troubles in southeastern Montana. A reflection of Helena’s cosmopolitan nature can be seen in a regular ad for John T. Ward, a local book dealer, which lists newspapers available from New York, St. Louis, Chicago, and Cincinnati, and a wide array of monthly periodicals including Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, and Godey’s Ladies Magazine. Robert Fisk managed the Herald for 28 years, with his tenure ending in 1895.
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Helena, Montana, 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