Twice-A-Week Plain Dealer (Cresco, Howard County, Iowa)

• 1895–1913
• Newspaper

Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.

1,804 issues from 1895 to 1913, published in Cresco, Iowa, digitised for Chronicling America.

As the seat of Howard County, the city of Cresco serves a largely agricultural community in northeast Iowa. In fact, the city’s name is Latin for “I grow.” Cresco has recently gained recognition as the birthplace of Nobel Peace Prize laureate and founder of the World Food Prize, Norman Borlaug.

The Cresco Plain Dealer actually began in the small community of New Oregon a few miles south of Cresco. Originally known as the New Oregon Plain Dealer, the paper was founded by H. Lick and William R. Mead, who published the first issue on August 20, 1859. The paper moved to Cresco in May 1867, at which time the title was changed to the Iowa Plain Dealer. Also in this year, T.P.R. Brown joined Mead as an editor. In 1895, the paper became the Twice-a-week Plain Dealer to reflect a change in its publication schedule; then in 1913 it reverted back to a weekly paper and became the Cresco Plain Dealer.

The Plain Dealer was published and edited primarily by the Mead family throughout most of its history. Soon after the paper was started, William’s brother, Francis J. Mead, purchased Lick’s share of the business and took over as publisher. William Mead continued as editor until his death in 1905, when his nephew Francis Dana Mead assumed this role. When Francis D. Mead died in 1932, his sons, George and Donald, took over operation of the paper. In 1935, Donald Mead was appointed postmaster, leaving his brother George to manage the paper on his own until the Plain Dealer was purchased by…

Genres

News

Published in

Cresco, 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