Raftsman's Journal (Clearfield, Pa.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
866 issues from 1854 to 1871, published in Clearfield, Pennsylvania, digitised for Chronicling America.
Clearfield Creek in Pennsylvania subsequently gave its name to both the county and the county seat. The 18th-century journal of the missionary Rev. John Ettwein noted that the creek was so called because nearby “the buffaloes formerly cleared large tracts of undergrowth, so as to give them the appearance of cleared fields.” Clearfield County was formed and named in 1804, and the county seat laid out in the following year by Abraham Witmer became Clearfield rather than taking the name of Chinklacamoose, the Indian village originally located on the site.
The West Branch of the Susquehanna River traverses Clearfield County from the southwest to the northeast, and the river was the industrial lifeblood of the region in the 19th century. Bituminous coal mined in the area was transported to market on river arks, but above all, the river enabled lumbering to become one of the biggest industries in the state. Timber felled in fall and winter would be rolled into the river and creeks swollen by the high waters of spring, fastened together to make huge rafts, then piloted downstream by a crew with oars. “The occupation of a raftsman has just enough of excitement and danger in it to make it attractive, and begun in boyhood is generally adhered to through life,” wrote William H. Egle in his 1883 history of Pennsylvania.
The Raftsman’s Journal was the creation of H. Bucher Swoope (occasionally spelled Swope), a young lawyer from Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, and began when the Whig…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Clearfield, Pennsylvania, 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