The Ward County Independent (Minot, Ward County, N.D.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,052 issues from 1903 to 1922, published in Minot, North Dakota, digitised for Chronicling America.
The Ward County Independent was launched in Minot, North Dakota, on April 1, 1902, under the guidance of Charles R. Truax. Born in 1868 in Minnesota, Truax, a former printer, came to Minot in 1890 as a boilermaker for the Great Northern Railroad. When failing health forced him to give up rigorous physical activity, he looked for another occupation. Another former printer, Glenn Colcord, who had come to Minot to take up a homestead, was working for the Ward County Reporter as a journalist to supplement his farm income. Colcord joined Truax in launching the Independent, taking the job of editor. At the turn of the century, Minot was a growing community with a population of more than 1,200. There were already two established newspapers, the Minot Optic and the aforementioned Ward County Reporter, both of which would establish daily editions by the middle of the decade while retaining their weekly editions.
With an Army press situated on a soapbox in a tiny office, Truax and Colcord squeaked out issues of the Independent, printing one page at a time using ready-prints, which were preprinted pages with blank spaces for local columns. To separate the columns of type, cigar boxes were cut to form the borders. Within a year, due to the publication of homestead proofs and print jobs, the partners were able to buy a Washington hand-press which was soon replaced by a Cranston press. It was necessary to install a gasoline engine to run the press until a consistent source of…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Minot, North Dakota, 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