Title
- Ayer Annual1
- Content: Independent
- Established: 1861
- Pages: (no entry)
- Size: (no entry)
- Editor:
- Publisher:
- Frequency: Thursday
- Coverage
- Region: Southwest region
- County: Clark county
- Unique ids
- LCCN: sn87093109
- OCLC: 17023412
Digitization plan
e.g. 2008-2009 grant
- Plan to digitize 1875-1884 - 8 reels
History
- Preceding title:
- Succeeding title:
- Related titles:
NEH Approved Essay
The settlement of Vancouver was founded by
the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1825. Strategically located along
the Columbia River,
the site was a primary headquarters for
the British Company. In 1846,
the United States and Britain settled on
the 49th parallel as
the demarcation between U.S. and British interests, and Fort Vancouver became American.
The city of Vancouver was incorporated into Washington Territory in 1857. By this time,
the importance of
the fort had declined, and agriculture became
the major industry in
the area.
The region grew throughout
the 1860s due to an influx of prospective gold miners headed north from California.
Founded in 1875,
the Vancouver Independent began as a four-page weekly, published on Saturdays. In 1877,
the Vancouver Independent expanded to an eight-page weekly, published on Thursdays. In an advertisement in
the 1876
Geo. P. Rowell & Co.’s American Newspaper Directory,
the Independent claimed to be
the "official paper of three counties, and
the only paper published in
the seven counties of
the Vancouver Land district of which it was
the official paper."
The 1877 circulation estimate was 520 readers. As
the name suggests,
the Independent was considered independent in its politics, but founder William Byron Daniels was a prominent member of
the Republican Party.
Born in Ohio and raised in Oregon, Daniels was a lawyer who would go on to become mayor of Vancouver in 1888 and who served in
the state House of Representatives from 1898 until his death in 1900. He was also secretary to
the Constitutional Convention in 1878. Daniels sold
the Independent to Thurston Daniels and John J. Beeson in 1878. Beeson had published
the Saturday Reporter LCCN sn85033022 in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, from 1860 to1873 and served as editor and proprietor of
the Independent until 1894.
The Independent was
then owned by Robert Lewis “Lloyd” DuBois until it ceased operations in 1910 and its subscription list was sold to
the Vancouver Columbian LCCN sn87093094. DuBois had been postmaster under
the McKinley administration and was later influential in getting
the bridge across
the Columbia River built between Vancouver and Portland. In 1906, DuBois ran for mayor on a Reform ticket, but lost badly. In 1953, DuBois donated
the archive of
the Vancouver Independent to
the Fort Vancouver Regional Library.
Essay Notes
Research
- N.W. Ayer & Son's American newspaper annual -- 1880 --
- NDNP Candidate Title List (Appendix A1.2)
- Chronicling America record (LOC) - The Vancouver independent
- WorldCat record - Vancouver Independent
- WSL record - Vancouver Independent
- UW record - Vancouver independent
TopReel
- Filmed by: University of Washington
- Positives held by: UW
- Call Number: A7102
- Library holds: 1875-09-04 through 1884-03-24 (incomplete)
- Film condition: 2B position, missing issue and resolution targets present
- Negatives held by: UW
Notes
- film eval notes 1875-09-04 1876-12-30: Contrast and resolution are good. There are notes on the film about creased or torn papers.
- film evaluation notes 1877-01-20 1877-12-27: images have good contrast and are legible. A few pages are a bit faded or have some damage, but overall image quality is good. Several issues are missing; missing issue targets are present.
- film evaluation notes 1878-01-03 1878-12-26: I found one very out of focus page and some of the pages are a bit faded, but generally the images a clear and legible with good contrast. There seems to be fewer missing issues for this year than the 1877 reel.
- film eval notes 1882-01-05 1882-12-28: images seem to be unevenly lit or discolored (the bottom 1/6 of the page is dark). Under magnification the text in the dark part of the page was readable, but the edges of the letters seemed indistinct.
Evaluation
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