Shenandoah Herald (Woodstock, Va.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
2,975 issues from 1866 to 1925, published in Woodstock, Virginia, digitised for Chronicling America.
The paper under several different titles dates back to 1817, beginning as Democratic, swinging to Republican in the 1890s, and back to Democratic—closely reflecting political developments in its northern Shenandoah Valley community. By the early 1900s, the Shenandoah Herald’s circulation within the county seat of Woodstock (population 1,069) and throughout the 507-square-mile Shenandoah County (population 20,253) had reached at least 1,300, or approximately 25 percent of households. John H. Grabill, a former Confederate cavalry captain, acquired the Herald soon after the Civil War and continued as editor of the weekly until his death in 1922—“through the columns of his paper . . . habitually promot[ing] the uplifting forces of the community and seiz[ing] every opportunity to preserve and disseminate” its history.
To further that aim, the Shenandoah Herald throughout the late 1880s to 1910 also served as an enthusiastic publisher of local and regional history—serializing excerpts and then issuing the work in book form. For example, the editor’s own remarkable memoir, Diary of a Soldier of the Stonewall Brigade, appeared in three issues in January 1909, to be followed by the book version that same year. Particularly noteworthy was the Herald’s part in the publication of the revised 1902 third edition of Samuel Kercheval’s landmark History of the Valley of Virginia.
During the early 1900s most issues of the Herald included a bit of fiction, anecdotes of local history, or…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Woodstock, 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