The Londonderry Sifter (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
846 issues from 1884 to 1921, published in South Londonderry, Vermont, digitised for Chronicling America.
The story of the Londonderry Sifter, a weekly paper that served southern Vermont’s West River Valley from 1883 to 1922, is primarily the story of its founder and long-time editor, George T. Shanks. Shanks was a self-taught printer who started the paper in South Londonderry with no previous newspaper experience. Until 1890, the Sifter displayed lines from the poet John Dryden, “When yellow sands are sifted from below, the sifting billows give a golden glow,” below the title on the front page. Shanks sifted the news to present columns such as “Sifterlets & Short and Snappy” and “State News & Through the Sifter’s Sieve.” He admonished local correspondents to “sift it” and present only “the pure gold, sharp and to the point.” Shanks was known as Sifter John, even on the paper’s masthead.
On the one hand, the Sifter was a typical country weekly. But Shanks used the paper to wage war on wrong-doers, especially those in public office, and “scalp them at every opportunity.” He attacked the prominent politicians and businessmen involved in what he called Vermont’s railroad monopoly ring, protested the patronage appointments of incompetent postmasters, and did battle with the Windham County Reformer’s equally outspoken editor, Charles H. Davenport. Sifter John’s intemperate pieces had unfortunate consequences. He lost the building he rented and the sheriff confiscated his press, he was sued for libel and held in jail, and his enemies started a rival paper, the West River News.…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- South Londonderry, Vermont, 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