The Meridional (Abbeville, La.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,867 issues from 1877 to 1905, published in Abbeville, Louisiana, digitised for Chronicling America.
Abbeville, the seat of Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, was founded in 1843 by the French Capuchin missionary Antoine Désiré Mégret. The town’s population was initially of predominantly French extraction, with a small component of Italian and German Catholics. In the 1880s, Midwestern farmers were attracted to the region by its developing rice and cattle industries and other agricultural opportunities.
Eugene Isidore Guégnon (1819-1877), a native of France, founded the Meridional in 1856. The four-page weekly later claimed to be the oldest newspaper in southwest Louisiana. Guégnon was assisted by Eugene Isidore Addison (1837-1900), son of his late business partner, George W. Addison. After Guégnon’s death, Addison managed the Meridional intermittently until his own death in 1900. Another editor connected with the paper was Dr. Clarence J. Edwards (1858-1920), briefly a state senator in the mid 1890s. Edwards became sole proprietor of the Meridional in 1900.
Initially published in English and French (with different content for each language), the number of French articles dwindled after about 1880 and had completely disappeared by the turn of the century. Recurring article topics included state and local politics, immigration to southwest Louisiana, real estate, rail versus water transport, road improvements, the development of the region’s rice, cattle, and oil industries, and baseball. The paper was one of many that opposed the Louisiana Lottery, a revenue-raising scheme…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Abbeville, Louisiana, United States
- 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