The Rice Belt Journal (Welsh, Calcasieu Parish, La.) 1900-19??
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,030 issues from 1900 to 1921, published in Welsh, Louisiana, digitised for Chronicling America.
Incorporated in 1888, the community of Welsh was named after Henry Welsh, a prominent local businessman who offered the Southern Pacific Railroad a right-of-way through his land, ensuring rail service to the town. By 1917, Welsh’s population had grown to about 1,250, due in large part to an influx of Midwestern farm families whom promoters of Louisiana’s rice industry, seeking experienced grain farmers, had recruited. Welsh and the surrounding area was also home to many French-speaking Cajuns who worked primarily in the cattle trade or on small farms.
The Welsh Rice Belt Journal was founded in 1900. Billed as “An American Newspaper, Devoted to the Interest of Southwest Louisiana,” it was nonpartisan and focused chiefly on agriculture. It also reported on land sales, the Louisiana oil boom, municipal improvements, the Good Roads Movement, the activities of temperance clubs and anti-gambling leagues, and the work of local Red Cross chapters during World War I. In addition to a “local and personal” section, the Journal carried regular news briefs from the neighboring towns of Iowa, Roanoke, Jennings, Crowley, Lake Arthur, and Lake Charles. Also of interest are ordinances and proceedings of the Welsh town council, reports of the parish school board, and minutes of the police jury, the governing body of the parish.
In 1912, the Rice Belt Journal became the official newspaper of Jefferson Davis Parish, one of three new parishes carved out of Calcasieu Parish. Published as an…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Welsh, Louisiana, 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