The Hillsdale Standard (Hillsdale, Mich.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
978 issues from 1851 to 1899, published in Hillsdale, Michigan, digitised for Chronicling America.
In its first edition, published on June 30, 1846, the editors of the weekly Hillsdale (Michigan) Whig Standard pledged to print “good Whig doctrine.” A Whig newspaper had been active in Hillsdale County as early as 1840, but by 1843 it had moved to Adrian, the seat of Lenawee County. By 1846, a group of Hillsdale County’s leading Whigs wanted a new partisan outlet for their party’s views. To make their dream a reality, they loaned money to Stephen D. Clarke and Harvey B. Rowlson, “payable when they were able to meet the claim.” Although very young (the eldest of the pair was barely 21), Clarke and Rowlson had previously worked at the Democratic Hillsdale Gazette and with that experience went on to found the Hillsdale Whig Standard.
The Standard was a reliable party organ. Like all Whig papers, it opposed the Mexican-American War, writing that “a long and prosperous peace, by which we have been elevated to an high degree of national glory, has been rudely broken, and the bloody banner of war is scattering upon the earth its countless miseries …”
The Standard struggled in its first years because the small number of Whig party supporters in the county offered very limited financial support. In the spring of 1850, Clarke sold his share in the paper to Rowlson, who became the sole owner and editor, positions he still held in 1879. In 1851, as the Whig Party was collapsing, Rowlson changed the paper’s name to the Hillsdale Standard. Rowlson subsequently became a Republican and…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Hillsdale, Michigan, 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