The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) awarded West Virginia University Libraries' West Virginia and Regional History Center (WVRHC) a grant — its seventh from the NEH with this year's totaling $225,000 — allowing important work of digitizing newspapers published in West Virginia from 1791 to 1963 to continue.
The award is part of the National Digital Newspaper Program, a collaboration between the NEH and the Library of Congress to enlist libraries and institutions around the country to create a digital database of historical United States newspapers.
This grant brings the NEH’s total funding of the WVRHC’s efforts to more than $1.5 million.
"We are thrilled once again to have the support of the NEH to make West Virginia newspapers accessible online to researchers across the globe," said WVRHC Director Lori Hostuttler. “West Virginia has a unique and complex history that is reflected in the newspapers preserved at the WVRHC.”
As we honor America’s 250th anniversary and remember her history, it is especially important that West Virginia’s contributions to our nation be preserved and available for all to discover. Lori Hostuttler, Director, WVRHC
The Chronicling America website provides access to more than 23 million newspaper pages from 1736 to 1963. So far, the WVRHC has contributed 500,000 pages from more than 105 historic West Virginia newspapers. Because of this grant, another 100,000 pages will soon be added to the site.
As the nation celebrates America’s 250th birthday, WVRHC Rare Book and Print Collection Archivist Rigby Philips said this round of newspapers will focus on the dissemination of democratic ideals into the frontier during the years just after the Revolution — or the United States’ Early Republic period. Known as western Virginia at the time, the region’s earliest newspapers reveal the beginnings of partisanship, a burgeoning American identity, and the growth of independent commerce in the Appalachians and beyond.
Between 1790 and 1830, western Virginia’s population grew by more than 120,000, and nearly 60 papers appeared in the region within a similar span. Because West Virginia gained statehood in 1863, past digitization efforts concentrated on the latter half of the nineteenth century, making papers published prior to statehood ripe for research and educational potential.
“West Virginia’s history does not begin at statehood. Newspapers from the front half of the nineteenth century provide a glimpse into the early workings of democracy, commerce, and labor in the frontier, including early partisan disputes between the eastern and western regions of Virginia.” Philips said. “We are excited and honored to preserve and digitize these important newspapers so that they are accessible to readers, historians, and scholars everywhere.”
Newspapers published in what is now West Virginia during the Early Republic period, or roughly 1790-1830, are largely missing from Chronicling America. This coupled with America’s 250th birthday provides an ideal opportunity for the digitization of West Virginia’s earliest newspapers.
Previously, the NEH funded WVRHC projects that focused on the timber industry, Mine Wars, African American newspapers, the Civil War with reporting from both sides of the conflict, struggles between eastern and western Virginia, West Virginia’s statehood movement and establishment, West Virginia’s 1872 Constitution, reconstruction, and the U.S. centennial.
The Chronicling America project has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.