Democrat and Sentinel (Ebensburg, Pa.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
605 issues from 1853 to 1866, published in Ebensburg, Pennsylvania, digitised for Chronicling America.
Cambria County lies in the Alleghenies, a rugged section of the Appalachian mountain range. The county was formed on March 26, 1804; the name is a variant of an ancient name of Wales (Cumbria), reflecting the region’s longtime Welsh presence. Ebensburg, in Cambria’s geographical center, became the county seat. Welsh roots here date to 1796, when colonists arrived from Philadelphia led by Congregational Minister Rees Lloyd, who named the settlement after his late son, Eben. In a rich bituminous coal region, Ebensburg thrived on mining and small industries, and it prospered in the late 1800s as a summer mountain resort for wealthy visitors including Andrew Carnegie and the Vanderbilts.
Both the Mountain Sentinel and its successor, the Democrat and Sentinel, were staunchly partisan Democratic newspapers, and their editorials offer interesting insights today into how state and national issues were received and interpreted in a small, remote mountain town. The usual contemporary mixture of fiction, stories reprinted from other newspapers, and local advertising accompanied the political editorials and full-text copies of political speeches and recently enacted state documents.
John G. Given, founding editor of the Mountain Sentinel (motto: “We go where democratic principles point the way; When they cease to lead; we cease to follow.”), launched the paper in 1844. He remained until the outbreak of the Mexican War when he left to serve with the Old Cambria Guards. Daniel C. Zahm…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Ebensburg, 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