Hayley G. Brazier shares with us how she’s been using Historic Oregon Newspapers in her dissertation research!

Can you tell us a little about your project and yourself?

I am a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Oregon. My primary research field is environmental history, which means I study the history of human exchanges with the environment in past times. We understand that all human history has an environmental context. I came to this field with a long-standing obsession with American history coupled with an environmentalist’s passion. For my dissertation, I am focusing on marine environmental history, in particular, how the development of deep-sea infrastructure has influenced larger stories of politics, diplomacy, and capitalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In addition to my research, I currently work as the program coordinator for the Digital Humanities @ UO (dh.uoregon.edu), so incorporating digital research from Historic Oregon Newspapers into my dissertation is a nice marriage of both of my interests.

What led you to Historic Oregon Newspapers?

I am using Historic Oregon Newspapers to find any mention of the installation of submarine cables both in the Atlantic and the Pacific in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In those results, I am first looking for articles that provide historical data on which companies landed those cables, on which dates, and in which locations. Once I have collected that data, those names and dates can guide me to additional archival collections. Searching historic newspapers can be a great method for getting a sense of a historical topic and an important stepping stone for further archival research. I am also using Historic Oregon Newspapers to gauge how Oregonians, and Americans in general, felt about the deep sea and submarine technologies; were they discussing it? Was it part of a common imagination, like outer space came to be in the mid-twentieth century? So, Historic Oregon Newspapers is helping me gauge a regional interest in a larger American trend.

How do you perform research on Historic Oregon Newspapers?

Historic Oregon Newspapers is definitely one of the better databases I have used. Other digital newspaper collections can be difficult to access, particularly if you live in a different state and they require a library card. Also, many databases charge expensive subscription fees, and that’s a real difficulty for graduate students like myself who are usually low on funds. So, I really appreciate that there are no obstacles to begin researching on Historic Oregon Newspapers. I can see accurate search results within seconds of arriving to the site without logging in, submitting advanced search criteria, or choosing between various catalogues or collections.

Because Historic Oregon Newspapers encompasses articles from a broad date range (1846-2017), the database results can reveal interesting trends. For example, if I search “submarine cable” and get a ton of articles from the 1910-1930s, but almost no articles for the 1880s-1900s, then those result could indicate that submarine cables were finally becoming a household topic in Oregon by the 1910s-1930s, even if the first submarine cables were created in the previous century.

On Historic Oregon Newspapers, there is a keyword search function that very helpfully populates a list of pertinent articles and then highlights that word in red within the article (my goodness, what time saver!). From that list, I can choose the newspaper article that has the most highlighted keywords, which helps me narrow in on an article that will be most relevant to my research.  I have found this keyword highlight function to be good at catching words even when the original document’s text has faded with age. Another helpful feature the database provides is the option to save articles as a PDF, which I use often. I can save the PDF directly to my primary source folders in Zotero. This PDF functions eliminates the needs to take screen shots of the article.

Today’s project highlight is on Kimberly Jensen and her research focus on women and gender in the early 20th century.

Can you tell us a little about your project and yourself?

I am Professor of History and Gender Studies at Western Oregon University in Monmouth. My research focuses particularly on women and gender in the early 20^th century United States, including Mobilizing Minerva: American Women in the First World War (2008) and Oregon’s Doctor to the World: Esther Pohl Lovejoy and a Life in Activism (2012). My current research investigates Oregon women, citizenship, civil liberties, and the surveillance state from 1913-1924. My work would not be possible without historic newspapers because those newspapers carried information about women’s activities and ideas not available in archival collections or other sources. Historic newspapers are research tools for my students examining the history of woman suffrage in Oregon with our community partner the Oregon Women’s History Consortium. I particularly want to thank my colleagues Jan Dilg and Linda Long, who serve with me on the OWHC board, for their support for the students and this project.

What interested you in this topic?

Anniversaries draw public attention and interest to historical events and processes. Oregon women achieved the right to vote in 1912. I was lucky enough to be part of a great group of scholars and activists who participated in Century of Action: Oregon Women Vote 1912-2012, a project of the Oregon Women’s History Consortium. Woman suffrage in Oregon is a topic I researched for my study of activist Esther Lovejoy, and my students at Western conducted additional research to create documents projects for the Century of Action website. The 100^th anniversary of the 19^th Amendment, which placed votes for women in the federal Constitution, will be August 26, 2020. Students at Western are again researching historic Oregon newspapers to provide materials for an online exhibit on the OWHC website related to Oregon2020.

What did you use in Historic Oregon Newspapers online? How did you use the site and which titles were useful to you?

In winter term 2018, students in my honors seminar at Western conducted research with Historic Oregon Newspapers online to examine what diverse Oregon women were doing in the period around 1920. They also investigated ideas about women, gender, and citizenship expressed by newspaper editors, editorial cartoonists, and reporters. They were able to narrow their searches to 1920 to hone in on specific events relating to the ratification. They also used the keyword search to examine articles relating to a particular activist or organization. Some students wished to search a particular city paper for events relating to that community. The student documents projects in the online exhibit feature context and analysis with the newspaper articles and editorials embedded for readers to examine. This introduces the public to the importance of historic newspapers in a direct, visual way. Students shared their research at a public event at the State Capitol on March 20, 2018. Western’s videographer Deborah Rezell interviewed them about the experience and featured highlights of the evening in a brief video.

What’s your next project?

This upcoming academic year 2018-2019, I will be working with students on two more elements of this online exhibit with the Oregon Women’s History Consortium. One group will research Oregon’s ratification of the 19^th Amendment in the special state legislative session in January 1920. The other group will investigate Oregon suffragists who picketed the White House in 1919 and 1920 and were arrested for their activism.

Today’s guest blog post comes from Elizabeth Peterson, M.A., M.L.I.S., Humanities Librarian and Curator of Moving Images here at UO Libraries:

When the Oregon Digital Newspaper Project launched several years ago, I immediately saw its potential for researching local movie history. I am the subject specialist librarian for cinema studies, and I recently completed a second master’s degree in film studies. As part of my degree program, I did an independent study project on movie theaters in Eugene and Springfield during the nickelodeon era (1905-1919), which I turned into a website and an article in Oregon Historical Quarterly. My research could have been done using the microfilm of the local newspapers, but I definitely couldn’t have made anywhere near as much progress in a 10-week term as I did using the digitized newspapers. The ability to do keyword searching across multiple years of issues also allows for detecting larger patterns and trends over time, something that is much more time-consuming and labor-intensive with analog materials.

This nickelodeon period is named for the type of theaters that were common in the early days of commercial cinema, which were often small, storefront venues with fewer than 200 seats. Admission was often five cents, thus the name “nickelodeon.” Much of the scholarly research about this period of film history has been about large urban areas such as New York City, so many of our assumptions about theaters, audiences, and the experience of movie-going have come from this research. Although more research has started to focus on rural areas and small towns, very little has been written about Oregon, and nothing about towns outside of Portland. I wanted to see how these issues played out in two small neighboring cities in Oregon. How would local film histories align and diverge from the dominant histories of film exhibition?

The quantity of data presented by ODNP is pretty overwhelming, so I’ve only just started to document pieces of that question. The Bell Theatre in Springfield is part of that story, and the two Springfield newspapers in ODNP were essential to help me to begin to understand it. The Lane County News and Springfield News ran regular ads and news stories that tell some of the history of the Bell Theatre, including its ownership, programming, admission prices, promotional strategies, and even the names of the high school girls who were hired to play the piano to accompany the silent movies. The Bell opened on Main Street in 1912. It wasn’t the first theater to show moving pictures in the town, but it was a fixture of downtown and Springfield leisure activities for over two decades. Like many theaters during this era, movies were part of a variety of programming that could include vaudeville, live music, dance performances, minstrel shows, and live theater. This ad from 1915 promoted a Hawaiian singing group in addition to movies.

The Lane County News collaborated with the Bell Theatre to feature a serialized story with a movie tie-in. “The New Adventures of J. Rufus Wallingford“ ran as a weekly story in the newspaper, while audiences could “see this story picturized” several times a week at the Bell.

This was a common practice to increase both newspaper readership and to sell movie tickets to audiences eager to see the next installment of the story. Thanks to the Oregon Digital Newspaper Project, we can see that “The New Adventures of J. Rufus Wallingford” appeared in newspapers and movie theaters all over Oregon including Portland, Pendleton, Bandon, and Grants Pass. These are the kinds of connections and trends that one can see easily in a digital database that would have been very difficult in the past.

Newspapers can tell us how movie theaters were situated within the cultural, economic, and social life of communities. The Bell served as a kind of community center, hosting lectures, political meetings, and fundraisers for local causes, such as an event for the Red Cross during World War I. It also hosted a presentation from the Oregon Social Hygiene society, for which the attendance gives a clue as to the number of seats in the theater. Three hundred men attended the lecture about the “four sex lies” and “what should be done in Springfield.”

These are just a few details from one theater in one town in Oregon. Clearly, there are many more details about Oregon film history and local movie-going that can be excavated from this rich database.

Today’s guest blog post comes from Linda Sausen Ivers:

I should probably start by introducing myself. Hello, my name is Linda, and I’m a genealogy addict! I started researching and recording the genealogy of my family in 1988. Although I was lucky enough to have known my grandparents and to have met one of my great-grandmothers, I really didn’t know many specifics about who they were or where they came from.  All I had to go on were some family stories and a lot of photographs.

Genealogy is Detective Work

Genealogists work backward in time to find out more about ancestors. We diligently search records that document facts—birth, death, marriage, divorce, place of residence, military service, land ownership, immigration, etc.—looking for information about our ancestors. We keep searching, looking for the type of things we don’t find in those records, the daily activities of those ancestors. Where were they between census years? Who did they socialize with? Did they travel for enjoyment? Were they involved in local politics? Did they participate in organizations? Did they have children that didn’t show up on a census?

Information about our ancestor’s daily activities can often be gleaned from newspapers. Newspaper stories can provide a richness and context to a family history beyond the recitation of names and dates. Early newspapers tended to be more locally focused in the type of news items they published. The Historic Oregon Newspapers collection and the Library of Congress Chronicling America Historic American Newspapers are treasure troves of information for genealogists. Both are online and fully text searchable.

I use the Historic Oregon Newspapers collection extensively while researching Oregon ancestors. The Lincoln County Leader is a great resource for my extended family on the coast.  For Douglas County, The Plaindealer, The Douglas Independent, and the Roseburg Review are excellent sources.

Some Examples

To illustrate several of the ways that newspapers can provide information about ancestor’s daily activities, I’ve chosen articles from the Douglas County papers. Using documented facts as background and to create a timeline, the newspapers provide a look at the interactions of my great grandfather, Herbert A. Tompkins, with family members who left Iowa and settled in both Douglas and Coos County, Oregon.

Finding Herbert (“Tompkin, H. A.” [sic]) on the list of unclaimed letters at the Roseburg, Oregon post office published in The Plaindealer (June 19, 1899) helps establish when he arrived.

Small mentions of the travels and social activities of area residents were a large part of the content of local papers. A mention in The Plaindealer (July 24, 1899) places T. F. Fisher and H.A. Tompkins in Roseburg on business the previous Saturday.

In the 1900 census, Herbert is living with Vianna and William Matthews (his oldest daughter and son-in-law) in South Slough, Coos County, Oregon. By 1903, he was back in Douglas County as documented in the “Olalla News” column in The Plaindealer (December 10, 1903).  Both Herbert and nephew Albert Tompkins (son of Herbert’s brother Elias) are mentioned. T. F. Fisher is also identified as Herbert’s nephew in the column. Fisher is the husband of Margaret Amelia (Millie) Tompkins, Albert’s sister. The use of the word “Uncle” in the context of the clipping may be a respectful reference to Herbert’s age (57).

Have you ever wondered how your ancestors did in school? You may be lucky and find a School Report. This one is for the South Ten Mile School and was published in The Douglas Independent (July 21, 1883). In the list, “Rec” is their record (grade/class standing), and “Dep” stands for deportment.

There are some other interesting relationships and connections among the students in this school.  Some family groups are easy to see; they share a last name.  What is not obvious is that Ada Byron and Millie Tompkins are siblings, the daughters of Elias Tompkins. Previous research confirmed their relationship and that between their mother’s death in 1876 and the 1880 census, they had been fostered by John Byron and his wife. The report lists Ada as using the Byron surname while Millie, her older sister, still maintains the Tompkins surname.

Other names in this list complement facts found through census data. The McCulloch’s are siblings and nieces of John A. Freeman (married to Herbert’s first wife). The Fisher children are all younger siblings of T. F. Fisher who marries Millie Tompkins in September 1890.

Newspaper articles can sometimes surprise us with what they reveal about our ancestors. This article appeared in the Roseburg Review (September 3, 1886) about an altercation involving a gun. I think the editorial question in the last line of the article is worth noting.

These are only five representative articles describing the activities of these ancestors and their families. What else have I found? Obituaries, estate filings, marriage notices, social gatherings, family tragedies, visits to and from family members, law suits, public works assessment notices, and advertisements for the rental and sale of property. I use this type of information to provide depth and context to the other research I’ve done when writing and sharing stories with my family.

Welcome to my addiction. I wish you good hunting and a great adventure!