Clarke Courier (Berryville, Va.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
4,116 issues from 1869 to 1948, published in Berryville, Virginia, digitised for Chronicling America.
The town of Berryville lies west of the Blue Ridge in the northern Shenandoah Valley, 20 miles southwest of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and 60 miles west of Washington, D.C. As the seat of Clarke County, Berryville by 1860 had at least three newspapers. However, all were casualties of the Civil War. The last of these, the Berryville Conservator, disappeared in March 1862, when newsprint from a partially printed issue was used to produce copies of The First Minnesota, published by a Union Regiment occupying the town for “circulation among their friends in the Great Northwest.” Two weeks later, the 27th Regiment, Indiana Volunteers, followed suit, printing at least two numbers of the Haversack.
William N. Nelson launched the Clarke Courier on February 19, 1869. A former captain of the Nelson Guards, Company C of the 2nd Regiment, Virginia Volunteers, who had been wounded at First Manassas, Nelson purchased the printing plant of the defunct The Clarke Journal. The four-page weekly opposed Reconstruction and the agenda of the Radical Republicans. In its “Salutatory,” the editor described occupied Virginia as “despoiled, conquered, torn bleeding” and wanted the state to “resume her rightful position.” Conservative and unwaveringly supportive of the Democratic Party, the paper in 1870 trumpeted a local election victory as “Radicalism Routed . . . White Men Triumphant!”
In 1870, Nelson relinquished the editorship of the Courier to John O. Crown, a Marylander. A former…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Berryville, 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