The Commercial (Union City, Tenn.) 190?-193?
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
916 issues from 1901 to 1922, published in Union City, Tennessee, digitised for Chronicling America.
According to the 1891 edition of Rowell’s Newspaper Directory, the Commercial was established in 1890 in Union City, Tennessee. Located in Obion County in northwest Tennessee, the town exported lumber, grain, tobacco, flour, and cotton. In its earlier years, the Commercial was published and edited by William R. Andrews. There is some evidence that Andrews published the West Tennessee Courier, and that the two papers merged in 1897 to form the Commercial Courier. The only known extant issue of the Commercial Courier is the Great Trade Edition from September 1899, which features many photographs of Union City and its prominent citizens. By spring 1901, the Democratic weekly was known simply as the Commercial, and was published and edited each Friday by John A. Baird and Ed Marshall.
Much of the column space within the Courier’s eight pages was taken up with ads for local companies and services, many of which took up half, and sometimes whole, pages. The paper featured national and international news, but with a strong focus on local news, particularly agricultural information. Reports from surrounding communities such as Rives and Troy were provided by residents, often using pseudonyms.
Obion County and the surrounding area was witness to serious unrest. Disputing the ownership of land held by the West Tennessee Land Company, groups of masked horsemen–Night Riders–rode around carrying out violent acts. In October 1908, a group of Night Riders kidnapped West Tennessee Land…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Union City, Tennessee, 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