Ottumwa Tri-Weekly Courier (Ottumwa, Iowa)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
2,002 issues from 1903 to 1916, published in Ottumwa, Iowa, digitised for Chronicling America.
Ottumwa is one of the largest cities in southeastern Iowa and serves as the seat of Wapello County. The Des Moines River runs through the center of the city, dividing it into northern and southern halves. Despite differing opinions on its exact translation, the early settlers of Ottumwa kept its Native American name because it was distinctive and set the town apart from other settlements in the area.
On August 8, 1848, Joseph H.D. Street and Richard H. Warden established Ottumwa’s first newspaper, the Des Moines Courier. In January 1851, Warden became the paper’s sole proprietor. James W. Norris joined Warden as an associate editor in April 1852; and a few years later, on December 20, 1855, he took over as the paper’s editor and proprietor. In 1857, the paper’s name was changed to the Weekly Ottumwa Courier. When Norris left the Courier in 1866, N.D. Mussleman, William H. Caldwell, and William C. Holden managed the paper for three years. In 1869, General John M. Hedrick and Major Augustus H. Hamilton took over as the Courier’s joint owners and editors until Hamilton assumed sole ownership in 1878. Alfred Wilson Lee acquired the Courier in 1891 and continued to acquire newspapers across Iowa and the Midwest, establishing his publishing company, Lee Enterprises. The Courier was sold to Liberty Publishing Group in 1999, and then to Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc., the paper’s current publisher, in 2001.
Throughout its history, the Courier’s name has been altered…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Ottumwa, Iowa, 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