The Bluffton News (Bluffton, Ohio) 1875-Current
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
952 issues from 1939 to 1959, published in Bluffton, Ohio, digitised for Chronicling America.
When Joseph DeFord established the village of Bluffton, Ohio, in the 1830s, he first named it “Shannon.” In either 1861 or 1872, to avoid confusion with another Shannon, Ohio, residents renamed the village “Bluffton,” after the town in Indiana from where many of the residents had immigrated. Bluffton sits halfway between Lima and Findlay on the border of their respective counties, Allen and Hancock, in northwest Ohio. Abundant hardwood in the area sparked Bluffton’s first commercial industry. When oil deposits were found in the area, the industrial character of the town changed to accommodate mills, refineries, foundries, and factories. Despite Bluffton’s small population, a train station eventually popped up there, and its presence probably contributed to the success of manufacturing there.
The Bluffton News is the longest-running newspaper in Bluffton, Ohio, and it still publishes today. One other paper, known at different times as the Bluffton Times and the Bluffton Standard, published briefly in the village before moving to Dunkirk, Ohio, in 1875. That summer, Nelson Wilbur Cunningham moved from Lima to Bluffton to establish the Bluffton News in the absence of other newspapers. Cunningham envisioned this seven-column weekly paper to be politically independent and focused on local news. The 1880 population of Bluffton was 1,290, and in 1885 the Bluffton News had a circulation of about 1,100, suggesting it was widely circulated in the village. When Cunningham switched to…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Bluffton, Ohio, 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