A span of years from the Halsey Enterprise (1917-1924 and 1927-1929) and Rural Enterprise (1924-1927) are now available in Historic Oregon Newspapers. Halsey is a rural town in Linn County south of Albany. It is also the hometown of Joanne Skelton, who generously sponsored this digitization project. Ms. Skelton is a dedicated local historian and genealogist who, after inquiring about online access to her hometown newspaper, decided to fund the project herself.

As soon as the papers went live online, she started research. Here is a message she shared:

I have been having fun reading these old papers. I was a little surprised at how many names I recognized, since it is a little before my time.

Already it has helped me with a family story. My Dad said that his grandparents had come from Kansas to Oregon for a visit in about 1917 because she [my grandmother] was going to a national DAR [Daughters of the American Revolution] convention in Portland. I doubted that it was completely correct because I had no record that she had belonged to the DAR. However, her obituary did say that she was a member of the WRC, Women’s Relief Corp, which is a women’s group of the GAR [Grand Army of the Republic], Civil War Veterans. I had previously done research to find if there was any type of national convention for them in Portland. I did find some articles in the Oregon Daily Journal from Portland in 1918, telling of a GAR and WRC convention that year August 19-24. But I had not been able to find any indication that my great-grandmother had come to Oregon then.  So today I put in the name Albertson for the Halsey paper and found an article on August 29, 1918 which stated: “J. N. Elliott and family, who expected to start for Kansas Tuesday of last week, were delayed a day the arrival of relatives from the east — Mrs. E’s parents, who are guests in the Albertson home.” Mrs. Elliott was my grandmother’s sister, this was my great-grandparents who were here in Oregon at the right time to attend the convention in Portland.

I am certainly looking forward to more discoveries.

The Halsey project is a good example of how even one person can spearhead a newspaper digitization project. Thanks, Joanne! We can do as little as one reel of microfilm at a time (this project was just three reels).

Want an overview of the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program and how to partner with us for digitization? Check out this short presentation or this overview of how the program works.