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Next month The Marietta Times marks 160 years of publication. It's been an interesting ride that I am glad I have been around to witness a portion of.
Newspapers in many communities are among the oldest businesses in town. People depend on newspapers to dig up the facts and explain them in a way that people understand what it means to them and their families. The Times has been doing that since Sept. 24, 1864. Through more than 40,000 editions, the paper has reported on the good and the bad for an incredibly long time.
A decade ago, when The Times marked 150 years, we ran an historical front page every day for a year. The project required looking at a lot of microfilm. Nearly all the editions are available at both the Marietta College Special Collections located in the Legacy Library and at the Washington County Public Library. I went into the project armed with key dates in Marietta, Washington County, national and world history, and then filled in with the interesting pages that I found while strolling through the editions.
As I slid back and forth through 150 years of Marietta history, I was fascinated by how the town and the newspaper changed over time.
While working on the yearlong project I came up with another idea. What if we took a look at The Times from roughly the same day every decade for 160 years.
I captured an entire edition from the third week of September of 1870, 1880, 1890, 1900,1910, 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000. I thought it would be interesting to look back at them, I didn't think it would take me another decade to dive into them.
Since I captured a newspaper from the same week of the year. Some of the same events were happening regardless of the year. For instance, people in Barlow were forever getting ready for the Barlow Fair. The Marietta High School Tigers were always confident that they would be able to beat Bellaire in football. Early on they took a special train that stopped at Williamstown, later they traveled here in massive caravans of cars.
We start our deep dive into the past on Friday with an overview of some of the front pages from our past. The full-page feature will run daily until the anniversary on Sept. 24. They will run in chronological order, so next Saturday you can not only read the newspaper from Sept. 7, 2024, but you will also be able to read the paper from Sept. 22, 1870. Kind of a two for one deal if you will.
I set up an online folder where you will be able to read every page of the papers in the series, as well as several hundred historical front pages. If you are a teacher, feel free to use them when teaching any period in American history after the Civil War. All the files are pdfs, so they can be viewed on anything. There will be a link and a QR code available on each page.
I hope you enjoy the series as much as I enjoyed putting it together. At least for the last several decades it was a bit of a trip down memory lane.
Art Smith is online manager of The Marietta Times. You can contact him at asmith@mariettatimes.com.