The big city newspaper when I grew up was The Oregonian, a Portland newspaper. My parents subscribed when we lived in Corvallis, Oregon, and to the Sunday Oregonian for many years during the time we lived in Richland.
When I went to Middlebury College, I was often homesick for the West. My friends and I went to a lot of movies because we didn’t have televisions. One evening, the movie Sometimes a Great Notion played on campus, and several of us attended. The movie takes place in a logging community in Oregon. When one scene showed a mailbox for delivery of The Oregonian, I shouted out, “The Oregonian!”
My friends thought I was crazy. I had to explain that The Oregonian seemed like my hometown newspaper, though it wasn’t. But it was a touch of home.
As I’ve researched my novels set in Oregon, I have relied frequently on old newspapers. In the 1840s, the main newspapers were based in Oregon City. Later, however, as Portland overtook Oregon City as the major town in Oregon, Portland papers, such as The Oregonian, became better sources.
The Oregonian began publication in December 1850, under the ownership of Thomas Dryer. It started as a weekly paper, but has been published daily since 1861. It is now the longest continuously published paper on the West Coast.
Although The New Northwest, the Portland newspaper edited by Abigail Scott Duniway, is the newspaper featured most prominently in my current work-in-progress, I also mention The Oregonian frequently in my novel. From 1866 until 1872, Abigail’s brother, Harvey Scott, was the editor of The Oregonian. Scott was fired by the paper’s owner in 1872, but when the paper was sold again in 1876, Harvey Scott was reappointed as the editor, a position he held until 1910, long after his sister’s paper folded.
My novel takes place in 1872-73, so Harvey Scott was not The Oregonian’s editor at that time. I am trying to decide whether to take a little literary license and use him as the editor in those years anyway (with an Author’s Note to point out what I’ve done). I’d like to feature him in a few scenes in the book to show the relationship between Abigail Duniway and her brother. And I did see that he wrote some articles for the paper, so I think my scenes make sense.
As I write my current novel, I try to reference real articles in The New Northwest and The Oregonian in my plot. Unfortunately for my research, it is harder to find digitized copies of 19th century Oregonian issues than of the Oregon City papers I used in my earlier novels. But The New Northwest is online, and I can easily find its issues from 1872 and 1873.
I recently found a source for old issues of The Oregonian through the Mid-Continent Public Library, but I can only access them when I’m connected to the library’s internet. Fortunately, I spend a lot of time in this library’s branches. So now I have more research to do.
Do you like browsing old newspaper issues?
