The Madison Journal (Tallulah, Madison Parish, La.) 1888-Current
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
434 issues from 1889 to 1921, published in Tallulah, Louisiana, digitised for Chronicling America.
Little is known about the early history of the Madison Journal, as only scattered issues survive from before 1912. In name at least, it was related to two newspapers published in Richmond and Delta, former seats of Madison Parish, a cotton-producing parish in northeast Louisiana near Vicksburg, Mississippi. Tallulah replaced Delta as the parish seat in 1883. The following year, Delta’s Madison Journal battled with a rival paper, the Madison Times of Tallulah, in a local election, lost its political patronage, and suspended publication. The Journal was revived in its current form in 1888 by Jeff B. Snyder and P. W. Hickey. By 1891, it was being published by William F. Marschalk, a descendant of Andrew Marschalk, the first printer in Mississippi Territory. George Spencer served as editor from 1898 to 1920. The paper eventually came under the ownership of Percy and William L. Rountree, members of a prominent family of north Louisiana newspaper publishers. W. L. Rountree managed the Journal until his death in 1968. It is still in publication as of 2011.
The Madison Journal was a fairly typical country paper of its day, containing a mix of local, national, and international news combined with fiction, poetry, and advertisements. A farm and garden column is of some interest, as is an article dated April 15, 1889, which announced that women were eligible to vote in a local election. By 1913, when the Rountree brothers acquired the paper, it had grown from a four- to an eight-page…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Tallulah, 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