The Fargo Forum and Daily Republican (Fargo, N.D.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
4,329 issues from 1903 to 1918, published in Fargo, North Dakota, digitised for Chronicling America.
Located along the Red River of the North, where the Northern Pacific Railroad crosses from Minnesota, is North Dakota’s largest city, Fargo. In the beginning, it was a rough and rowdy frontier town, with its fair share of bordellos and saloons. In 1876, the population was only 600. But Fargo grew rapidly as settlers responded to the promise of cheap, fertile farmland in the Red River Valley. By 1892, it was a city of more than 8,000 inhabitants; the tents and shanties of earlier days had been replaced mainly by wood-frame buildings. Today, Fargo’s population is more than 125,000, with a metropolitan population nearly twice that size.
Having roots in several newspapers going back to 1878, the Fargo Forum and Daily Republican was first published by Major Alanson W. Edwards and Colonel H. C. Plumley on November 17, 1891. When Edwards passed away in 1908, Plumley succeeded him. Although a talented newspaperman, Plumley did not have the necessary business skills. Financial problems forced the paper into receivership, and it was purchased by J. P. Dotson of Crookston, Minnesota, in 1912. Four years later Dotson sold it to Norman B. Black, former publisher and general manager of the Grand Forks Herald, for $100,000. Black took over as publisher on May 1, 1917, with three co-owners: his son, Norman D. Black; newspaperman Holder Doran “Happy” Paulson; and James E. Rockwell.
Under Black’s leadership, the Fargo Forum prospered and took a more moderate and thoughtful approach to…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Fargo, North Dakota, 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