Maryland Independent (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1874-Current
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,589 issues from 1874 to 1934, published in Waldorf, Maryland, digitised for Chronicling America.
The Maryland Independent was founded in 1874 by John S. Button (1840-1880), a printer based in the Charles County seat of government, Port Tobacco. The emergence of this paper paralleled the ascendancy of the Republican Party in Charles County, due to an African American majority in the population that voted overwhelmingly for the party of Abraham Lincoln. In 1877, Eugene Diggs, a local lawyer and former state’s attorney, joined the Independent as editor and maintained the paper’s advocacy for Republican candidates and policies. This position put it at odds with the Port Tobacco Times, the county’s Democratic paper, and with the rest of southern Maryland, which had large Democratic majorities.
In 1879, a revolution of sorts occurred when a local Democratic leader, Vivian Brent (1831-1906) acquired the Maryland Independent, retaining Button as the business manager. Button’s death the following year, and Brent’s move to Washington, D.C. to work in the federal government, led to the sale of the paper to Adrian Posey (1857-1922) in 1882. Posey was a Republican lawyer and office holder who served in the Maryland House of Delegates, the Maryland Senate, and as the Charles County state’s attorney. His son, F. Stone Posey (1885-1926) joined his father in publishing the Independent, which was sold to Thomas B.R. Mudd (1890-1965) after his death in 1926. Mudd came from another prominent Republican family in the county, but his tenure at the Independent was short. Ruey P. Bowling…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Waldorf, Maryland, 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