The Morristown Gazette (Morristown, Tenn.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
613 issues from 1868 to 1884, published in Morristown, Tennessee, digitised for Chronicling America.
The history of the Morristown [Tennessee] Gazette is dominated by one family: the Helms. Four generations of the Helms family published and edited the newspaper for over a century, from 1873 to 1975.
W. Neal founded the Morristown Gazette soon after the end of the Civil War, in either 1866 or 1867. In October 1867, the Gazette was sold to brothers Lawrence P. and George E. Speck, who owned the paper until September 1873, when John E. Helms (b. 1827) became the publisher. No stranger to newspapering, Helms was just 12 years old when he began his apprenticeship at the Knoxville Argus and Commercial Herald. In 1847, Helms and his brother William T. became publishers of the Knoxville Standard and together later founded the Knoxville Plebeian, Knoxville’s first daily.
In its early years, the Morristown Gazette–a four-page Democratic newspaper–was published weekly on Wednesdays. The paper circulated throughout Hamblen, Hawkins, Cocke, Jefferson, Grainger, and Claiborne counties, making it “the best advertising medium to Upper East Tennessee.” The advertisements for the paper promoted businesses from this part of Tennessee and farther west into Knoxville. By 1878, the newspaper had an estimated circulation of 450 (Morristown’s total population was around 1,200). In addition to national and local news and politics, the Gazette covered the railroad industry extensively, often publishing plans for railroad lines, and occasionally the meeting minutes from the East Tennessee,…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Morristown, Tennessee, 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