The Watchman and Southron (Sumter, S.C.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
3,306 issues from 1881 to 1927, published in Sumter, South Carolina, digitised for Chronicling America.
The weekly Sumter Watchman and Southron (1881-1930) served the residents of Sumter County, located in the Midlands region of South Carolina, for half a century. Whereas the title of the Columbia-based Daily Phoenix conjured images of a community reborn, the Watchman and Southron alluded to the politically divisive years leading up to the Civil War. The word “watchman” recalled the partisan spirit of newspapers like the Greenville Southern Patriot and the Anderson Southern Rights Advocate, published in 1851 and 1852, respectively. “Southron,” a Scottish dialect variant for “Southern,” was an expression of identity used by Confederates.
The Watchman and Southron began as two weekly newspapers, the Sumter Watchman and the True Southron. Allen A. Gilbert and Horatio Lincoln Darr started the Sumter Watchman in 1855, merging the Sumter Banner and Sumterville Black River Watchman. The Sumter Banner had held the distinction of being one of Sumter’s earliest and longest-running newspapers; several prominent citizens, including William Francis Baker Haynsworth, John Smythe Richardson, Jr., and James Sanders Guignard Richardson, had at times acted as editors and publishers. Gilbert and Darr also launched the Sumter Tri-weekly Watchman and the Sumter Semi-weekly Watchman. In April 1865, soldiers of the 25th Ohio Infantry Regiment briefly seized control of the Watchman and printed a single-issue newspaper called the Banner of Freedom before destroying its offices.
In 1866, Darr and…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Sumter, South Carolina, 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