Licking Valley Courier (West Liberty, Ky.) 19??-Current
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
408 issues from 1911 to 1922, published in West Liberty, Kentucky, digitised for Chronicling America.
In February 1910, the Morgan County seat of West Liberty was a growing hub of Kentucky’s eastern Mountain Coalfields region which needed a newspaper after the cessation of the county’s only broadside, the Morgan County News. That same month, the Licking Valley Courier was started by a local citizen stock company of 17 men known as Morgan County Publishing Co. The four-page weekly was first edited by stockholder and county attorney Sidney M.R. Hurt. The job immediately passed to fellow stockholder Henry Gardner Cottle who swiftly bought out the other shareholders to become sole owner.
During his tenure as editor, the paper garnered statewide recognition for Cottle’s “strong, virile, and versatile writings…He made the Courier a power for good in the community” and had a reputation for honesty. Cottle remained editor for nearly a decade, but sold the Courier to lawyer-turned-newspaperman Lon Timothy Hovermale in 1911.
Attorney Hovermale had always dabbled in journalism, establishing papers in Menifee, Wolfe, and Breathitt counties before buying the Courier. In 1919, he left the legal profession to run the Courier full time. His son, Allie Young Hovermale, was his linotype operator. Hovermale used his background in law to steer the Courier, touting its politics as “Progressive Democracy” and its religion “The Golden Rule.” The Courier became Hovermale’s bully pulpit for the “moral cleanup of the town,” as he was determined to rid the community of drunkenness and prostitution.…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- West Liberty, Kentucky, 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