The Norfolk Virginian (Norfolk, Va.) 186?-189?
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
934 issues from 1895 to 1898, published in Norfolk, Virginia, digitised for Chronicling America.
Norfolk, Virginia, lies where the James and the Elizabeth rivers converge upon the lower shores of the Chesapeake Bay. “Original old Norfolk,” explains Carroll Walker, author of Norfolk: A Tricentennial Pictorial History, “was virtually an island, connected to the mainland by a narrow umbilical cord. All around were coves, creeks, and narrow inlets that poked their watery fingers deep into the irregular shoreline, creating small and large patches of marshland.”
Norfolk was established in 1680 by an act of the House of Burgesses. Its location as a port made it a center of commerce and by 1776 Norfolk was the largest community in Virginia. Although British forces burned Norfolk during the Revolutionary War, the city recovered in large part due to trade with Europe and the West Indies. In March 1862, the waters off Norfolk were the setting for the historic battle between the ironclad ships, the CSS Virginia (formerly the USS Merrimack) and the USS Monitor. Only two months after this epic naval battle, Willie Lamb, the mayor of Norfolk, surrendered the city to Union troops. It remained under martial law for the duration of the war.
In the aftermath of the Civil War, the daily Norfolk Virginian was established on November 21, 1865, by G.A. [Gustavus Adolphus] Sykes and Company. Though conservative and pro-Democrat, the paper publically claimed that it accepted “the results of the war.” It was first edited by Anthony M. Keiley and Captain James Barron Hope [1865-74]. The latter…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Norfolk, 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