Originally published in the Cecil Whig
Did Uncle Jake’s barn really burn down in the summer of 1890? Did Aunt Betty win the Queen of the May in 1938? And how much did grandpa’s Studebaker cost in 1940? One excellent place to find the answers to these and other burning questions is old newspapers. The Historical Society of Cecil County is the proud guardian of many Cecil County papers in both their original form and on microfilm. Now, many of those old crumbling newspapers and worn out rolls of microfilm are finding new life through digitization. Society board member and historian, Mike Dixon, says it’s a matter of keeping up with the times.
“As technology has changed the way we make materials from the past available to patrons, our volunteers have always worked to keep up with the times. So,” Mike continues, “when microfilm was state-of-the-art in the 1970s, we microfilmed our newspapers. That format served us well for some 30-years and now we are working to move into e-formats.”
Twice in 2015 we updated you on the progress being made in the Society’s efforts to digitize our old newspaper collection. We noted that Society volunteer Alan Gardner was spearheading the drive that scanned several years-worth of the Cecil County Star, the Rising Sun Home Journal, and the Rising Sun Journal newspapers; all of which are fully searchable and also available at the Society. Alan then moved on to scan nearly 2 decades of the Midland Journal (1928-1946), also printed in Rising Sun, and 2 years-worth of the Cecil Democrat (1911-1912), thus completing the society’s Cecil Democrat digital collection between 1909 and 1923.
But Alan was not finished. Since our last update in June, Alan has scanned the short lived Cecil Republican (1833), the not much longer lasting Cecil Gazette (1834-1835’ 1837-1842), the Elkton Appeal (1884-1886), the Elkton Courier (1836-1837), and additional volumes of the Midland Journal (1885-1946). We thank Alan for his herculean efforts on this on-going project.
As you might imagine, our Historical Society is not alone in its newspaper digitization efforts.
The University of Maryland library sponsors the Historic Maryland Newspaper Project. According to the project web site, it’s “an ongoing effort to digitize Maryland’s newspapers and make them accessible for free on the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America website.” “We have digitized,” reports the site, “107,414 pages from Baltimore, Hagerstown, and Cumberland newspapers.” That’s the old news. The new news is the project will continue to expand its digitization effort by moving on to scan and make available both the Cecil Whig (1841 – 1922) and the Aegis of Bel Air, Harford County (1864-1923). Sometime this year both fully searchable newspapers will be available on the project website at http://www.lib.umd.edu/digital/newspapers/home
As we noted last June, several local newspapers were scanned and made available to our patrons as the result of generous donations from history minded donors, the latest being one for $1000 in December. We thank them for their on-going support. We should also point out that Alan’s work is completely voluntary.
For more information on the Historical Society of Cecil County’s newspaper digitization project, the University of Maryland “Historic Maryland Newspaper Project,” or to review the local titles we maintain, come to the Society at 135 East Main Street in Elkton or visit us on the web at www.cecilhistory.org