The Newtown Bee (Newtown, Conn.) 1877-Current
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,402 issues from 1877 to 1909, published in Newtown, Connecticut, digitised for Chronicling America.
Newtown, Connecticut town historian Daniel Cruson placed the birth of the Newtown Bee in 1870 within New England’s post-Civil War florescence of small rural weeklies. It was one of more than 360 distinct weekly titles published in Connecticut between 1865 and 1900. The Newtown Bee was special in that this weekly once devoted to agriculture reinvented itself to serve a town that over time became a center for the production of rubber belting products, a resort linked by rail to the Connecticut shoreline, and, finally, in the last half of the 20th century, a suburban retreat.
In 1880, Reuben H. Smith purchased a foundering publication known as the Bee (1877) from Bethel publisher, John Pearce. The Newtown Bee has since flourished under the direction of the Smith family. With his brother, Allison P. Smith, as editor, and himself as business manager, Reuben Smith rolled the paper’s first edition off the press in April 1881 from its Main Street quarters–the beginning of over a century of uninterrupted weekly publication. Family involvement has been the backbone of the paper. When Reuben moved on to other ventures in 1892, another brother, Arthur, stepped into the role of business manager. Allison maintained the editorial position until his death in 1934. He was succeeded by Arthur’s son, Paul, who steered the Newtown Bee until 1973. R. Scudder Smith, Paul’s son, took over as editor at that time, as well as title of publisher upon his father’s death in 1990.
The early Newtown…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Newtown, Connecticut, 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