By Jason Sethre
Publisher
Fillmore County Journal
jason@fillmorecountyjournal.com
Over the past several weeks, I have come to appreciate a few revelations.
A newspaper library
First, at the Fillmore County Journal office, we do our best to preserve the history of our newspaper.
When I worked at daily newspapers in Minnesota, Illinois, and Indiana, there was a staff librarian who was the gatekeeper of information. This person was better than Google. They had worked at the newspaper for 30 to 40 years, and could recall where to find anything that had appeared in the newspaper before and during their tenure.
At a weekly newspaper like ours, we don’t have the luxury of employing a person who is specifically dedicated to managing the archives of the newspaper. So, that duty falls on every single person who works at the newspaper. Some days, we may feel like the jack of all trades, master of none – pulled in a lot of different directions. But that’s OK. Our days are never boring!
About a month ago, I handed over a project to Pailey Gordon and Olivia Sethre, working at the newspaper during the summer months. For every issue of the Fillmore County Journal, we save 15 copies for our archives. We also send two copies of our newspaper to the Minnesota Historical Society, as required by Minnesota State Statute for newspapers identified as an official legal newspaper.
I explained to Pailey and Olivia, while they were organizing our inventory of printed archives, we have people contact us all the time for electronic or printed content from our newspaper archives. Just over the course of the past 10 years, we have accumulated 7,800 archived issues of the Fillmore County Journal. Out of the 15 copies per issues, they have dwindled as people have stopped by to pick up back issues. That’s still a lot of newspapers to store in a manner that can be catalogued for easy access.
Ironically, we just received a phone call the other day from a woman asking how far back our electronic archives are available.
I asked her how far back she wanted to go. She said, “1868,” and I said we couldn’t help her since our newspaper began publishing in 1985. But, we do have a copy of every issue from 1985 to current.
Interestingly, as a matter of history, newspapers are full of information that will be referred to decades and centuries after many of us are gone. Who was the mayor? What did the city council or school board decide to do that changed the town or school district forever? What was a special story about one of your relatives that made the front page of the local newspaper?
While all of our newspapers in recent years have been made available and searchable for free on the Internet, it wouldn’t be financially feasible for most newspapers to dedicate resources to providing electronic archives for newspapers dating back to the mid-1800s. For example: If a weekly newspaper was published in 1868, they’d be posting content of back issues in excess of 8,000 issues of their newspaper. If that newspaper published 40 pages per week like ours, that would be well over 300,000 pages of content.
Historical libraries
Another place where librarians often wear the title of historians is at our local history centers.
With my recent involvement in the Fountain 150th celebration, I became a little more acquainted with the history of Fountain.
Established in 1869, back when the founding fathers of that community sat at a table to decide the name of the community, they had two names up for a vote: Fountain or Summit. Some people felt that Summit would have been a good name for the city because it resided on the highest ground in Fillmore County. In the end, of course, Fountain prevailed.
Naming a city is like naming your child. I’m sure this was a big deal back in 1869, and not just for Fountain. Every community had to make these decisions! And, they’re still making decisions!
I wouldn’t know this information if I had not stopped by the Fillmore County History Center and chatted with their staff.
There were a lot of interesting things I looked at and talked about with their staff.
If you’re looking for a family field trip back in time, we have a lot of great history centers in Fillmore County. And, many of them have a piece of your family history just waiting to be discovered.
Take pride, and keep your family history alive!