Tennessee has now made its first contribution to a national electronic database of historical newspapers, thanks to a federal grant.
The Tennessee Newspaper Digitization Project (TNDP) is a joint effort between the University of Tennessee and the Tennessee State Library and Archives (TSLA), funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), to digitize more than 100,000 pages of Tennessee’s microfilmed newspapers dating from 1836 to 1922. The NEH has funded similar projects in other states as it builds the national database.
A panel of historians, scholars, librarians, and genealogists has selected a range of newspaper titles from across Tennessee for inclusion in the project. The initial phase of the project focuses on the Civil War and Reconstruction eras.
Issues of the Memphis Daily Appeal from 1857 to 1872 were scanned and added to the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America website. To view the paper, visit http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov. Access is free to the public.
Pages from the newspaper include:
- Frontline dispatches from Civil War correspondents such as “SHADOW” and “DIXIE;”
- News reports from the cotton industry, railroads, and riverboats; and
- Advertisements for farm equipment, clothing, guns, real estate, or cure-all medicines such as “Braggs Arctic Liniment” and “Dr. Mott’s Chalybeate Pills.”
Additional historical Tennessee newspapers scheduled to be digitized include Brownlow’s Knoxville Whig, the Nashville Union and American, the Chattanooga Daily Rebel, the Athens Post, and the Clarksville Weekly Chronicle.
TSLA collects and preserves books and records of historical, documentary, and reference value and promotes library and archival development throughout the state. NEH is an independent federal agency which supports learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities.