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Announcing…
October 29, 2012 by GuyHeilenman · 1 Comment
Two special events related to the Rare & Early Newspapers collectible are scheduled for this week:
1) A long time collector of historic newspapers, Todd Andrlik, has written a book which is sure to quickly become a classic within the hobby, “Reporting The Revolutionary War: Before It Was History, It Was News”, which tells the story of the Revolutionary War through the eyes of the newspapers of the period. Todd used authentic newspapers from the period… putting into practice what has been stated many times at History’s Newsstand: “History is never more fascinating than when it’s read from the day it was 1st reported.” The link below will take you to Amazon’s “Look Inside” and will give you the opportunity to pre-order a copy through Wednesday, and direct order starting Thursday. Thanks Todd.
“Reporting The Revolutionary War: Before It Was History, It Was News”
2) “Newspapers that shaped the world…“, a special edition catalog from Timothy Hughes Rare & Early Newspapers, is also scheduled to be released on Thursday, at 12:01 AM ET, on November 1, 2012. While the following link shows items from our previous catalog, as of 12:01, it will take you to the release of what may be our most notable catalog to-date.
“Newspapers that shaped the world…“
The first newspapers in Texas…
October 25, 2012 by TimHughes · Leave a Comment
Texas had a fascinating history, with flags of six nations having flown over some portion of the present state: Spain, France, Mexico, Republic of Texas, United States of America, & Confederates States of America.
It was during the time when the Mexico flag flew over its land that a periodical titled “El Mejicano” was reportedly printed in Nacogdoches in May , 1813, as noted in Oswald’s “History of Printing In The Americas”. One report, from the “Southwestern Historical Quarterly” notes that a newspaper was printed from the same press at about the same time, titled “Gaceta de Texas” with a date of May 25, 1813. Some years later Horatio Bigelow and Eli Harris put out the first issue of the “Texas Republican” on Aug. 14, 1819. When Nacogdoches was captured by the Mexicans two months later the printing office was destroyed.
Milton Slocum, a printer from Massachusetts, established the “Mexican Advocate“, a newspaper in both English and Spanish, in Nacogdoches in September, 1829. Unfortunately no copies have survived. Outside of Nacogdoches a weekly paper titled the “Texas Gazette” was begun on Sept. 25, 1829 in San Felipe de Austin. This paper then moved to Brazoria in July 1832 and ultimately was sold to the publisher of an existing newspaper titled the “Texas Gazette & Brazoria Commercial” which had begun just two years earlier. The combined enterprise became the “Constitutional Advocate and Brazoria Advertiser“.
Beginning in the 1830’s a multitude of newspapers sprang up in present-day Texas, continuing in the 1840’s and beyond.
Countdown to “Newspapers that changed the world…”
October 24, 2012 by GuyHeilenman · Leave a Comment
Each month Timothy Hughes Rare & Early Newspapers releases a catalog containing a new set of historic and collectible newspapers (1600′s through 20th century). However, on November 1, 2012, at 12:01 AM ET, the special edition, “Newspapers that changed the world…” will be released. Whether you already collect newspapers, or desire to simply view a sampling of what the hobby has to offer, check back for this special occasion:
Prior to November 1, 2012 and after November 30, 2012, the link below will take you to the most recent offerings of Timothy Hughes Rare & Early Newspapers… History’s Newsstand! During the month of November it will take you to the special release catalog, “Newspapers that changed the world”.
View: “Newspapers that changed the world…“
Newspaper Confederate bank note creates a crisis…
October 1, 2012 by TimHughes · 2 Comments
Having recently come across the Feb. 24, 1862 issue of “The Philadelphia Inquirer” (see photo) it reminded me of what this innocent looking front page image of the Confederate five dollar note did in creating a crisis in the Confederate Treasury.
Several months ago the “Opinionator” blog of the New York Times did a very nice piece on the fascinating history of this note and its consequences, which we share with our collectors:
In March 1862, an unusual ad began appearing in Northern newspapers. Among the shops selling pianos and patent medicines, sheet music and sewing machines, this one stood out: it promised “perfect fac-similes” of Confederate currency. There were seven kinds of notes for sale, and testimonials from The New York Tribune and others praising the replicas for their high quality and low prices. Five cents bought you one. Two dollars bought a hundred. Fifteen dollars bought a thousand. The word “counterfeits” never appeared. These were “Mementos of the Rebellion,” sold by a Philadelphia shopkeeper named Samuel Curtis Upham.
Upham didn’t look like a counterfeiter. He didn’t hide out in the woods or perform daring jailbreaks. He didn’t run from the police. He was a respectable small-business owner and devoted Northern patriot. He ran a store that sold stationery, newspapers and cosmetics. But he was also an entrepreneur with an eye for easy profit, and the Civil War offered the business opportunity of a lifetime: the ability to forge money without breaking the law. Confederate currency, issued by a government that was emphatically not recognized by the Union, had no legal status in the North, which meant Upham could sell his “fac-similes” with impunity.
Over the next 18 months he built the most notorious counterfeiting enterprise of the Civil War — one that also happened to be perfectly legal. His forgeries flooded the South, undermining the value of the Confederate dollar and provoking enraged responses from Southern leaders. He waged war on the enemy’s currency, serving his pocketbook and his country at the same time.
Upham first got the idea the month before, on Feb. 24, 1862. That day, customers kept coming into his shop to buy The Philadelphia Inquirer. Puzzled, he asked one of them what made that particular edition so popular. The answer was on the front page: the Inquirer’s editors had printed a copy of a five-dollar Confederate note. Philadelphians had never seen Rebel money before and were fascinated by it.
Upham saw a chance to cash in. He raced to the Inquirer’s offices, bought the plate of the note, and printed 3,000 copies on French letter paper. They sold extremely well. Along the bottom of each bill, he included a thin strip that read, in small print, “Fac-simile Confederate Note,” with his name and address. The tags could easily be clipped off, transforming the “fac-simile” into an excellent counterfeit.
After his first print run, Upham rapidly expanded his inventory. He took out ads in newspapers, promising to pay in gold for more specimens of Southern money. At first, it seemed possible that he sincerely thought of his reproductions as souvenirs. In early 1862, most Northerners still expected the war to be brief and glorious. They wanted “mementos of the Rebellion” before the Union crushed it. By the time Upham launched his publicity campaign in March, however, his business had clearly evolved from a modest retail operation into a high-volume wholesaling enterprise. No one needed 1,000 souvenirs: people were clearly using his products for a less innocent purpose.
By April, Upham’s fakes began appearing in Richmond, the Confederate capital. They caused a sensation at the Confederate Treasury Department, and a Treasury officer persuaded the editors of the Richmond Daily Dispatch to inform the public about the new threat. “This note is well calculated to deceive, and in nearly every particular is a fac-simile of the original,” they wrote, condemning the forgeries as “Yankee scoundrelism.” In May, the Dispatch discovered one of Upham’s notes with the margin bearing his name and address still attached. “Who is this man Upham?” they asked. “A knave swindler, and forger of the most depraved and despicable sort.”
By then, Upham had grown his business considerably. In an advertisement published in late May, he claimed to have sold half a million notes in the past three months. He now offered 14 varieties of Confederate notes, postage stamps, and “shinplasters” — fractional bills worth anywhere from 5 to 15 cents — and printed his fakes on real banknote paper. Ingeniously, he even fulfilled orders through the mail. For 50 cents, plus 18 cents for postage, customers throughout the Union could have a hundred of Upham’s notes delivered.
Southerners responded with outrage. They became convinced that Upham belonged to a covert Union plot to devalue the Confederate dollar. For the Philadelphia shopkeeper to be able to advertise his counterfeits openly and send them through the mail meant the authorities must have given him permission or, possibly, material support. Moreover, Union troops spent counterfeit Confederate cash in large quantities — evidence of “a deep laid scheme on the part of the thieving, counterfeiting North … to undermine the Confederate currency,” in the eyes of the Daily Richmond Examiner.
In the summer of 1862, Upham’s notes inundated northern Virginia, brought by Union forces marching south from Washington. A Southern journalist observed men “fortified with exhaustless quantities of Philadelphia Confederate notes,” which they used to buy everything from horses to sugar to tobacco. When one of the soldiers ended up a prisoner in Richmond, the Confederates found one of Upham’s advertisements on him. The shopkeeper’s counterfeits appeared “wherever an execrable Yankee soldier polluted the soil with his cloven foot,” fumed the Richmond Daily Dispatch.
By the summer of 1862, as fake cash flowed across the border in ever greater quantities, the Confederate leadership took notice. On Aug. 18, President Jefferson Davis discussed the threat in a message to the Confederate Congress. Counterfeit Confederate notes were “publicly advertised for sale” and furnished to “the soldiers of the invading army” with the full “complicity” of the Union government, Davis declared. Later that day, Confederate Treasury Secretary Christopher Memminger submitted a report to the House of Representatives that reiterated Davis’s concerns and singled out Upham’s role in the crisis: “[P]rinted advertisements have been found stating that the counterfeit notes, in any quantity, will be forwarded by mail from Chestnut street, in Philadelphia.” By then, forged bills had been found far from the Union border, in Atlanta, Savannah, Montgomery and other cities of the Deep South. There was “no means of knowing to what extent they have been circulated,” the Richmond Daily Dispatch warned.
Hamstrung by a disorganized government and mounting logistical challenges, the Confederacy couldn’t stanch the surge of counterfeit currency. Despite Southern claims, however, it’s unlikely that the Union government ever actively promoted the forging of Confederate money. Federal authorities most likely found it easier to ignore the forging of Southern bills than to take a position either for or against it. They certainly never interfered with Upham, who freely continued forging Confederate cash until August 1863. By that time, the value of the Southern dollar had fallen so low that it was hardly worth counterfeiting. During the 18 months that Upham operated his venture, the purchasing power of the Confederate dollar disintegrated. Between February 1862 and August 1863, the value of Confederate paper money fell by ninety percent.
Upham wasn’t the only reason behind this collapse. Fake cash plagued the Confederacy from the beginning, supplied by Northern and Southern counterfeiting gangs. Gross mismanagement of Southern finances led to runaway inflation, which posed an even greater danger to the Confederate dollar. But Upham’s impact was significant. He later estimated that he had produced $15 million worth of Confederate bills. If all of that ended up in the South, it would have made up almost 3 percent of the total money supply — a large amount for a single counterfeiter. In March 1862, his business had only just begun. Over the next year and a half, he would become one of the strangest success stories of the Civil War: a legal counterfeiter, driven by patriotism and personal gain, who struck at the financial heart of the Confederacy from the safety of downtown Philadelphia.
The Wright Brothers… from a friend…
September 21, 2012 by GuyHeilenman · 2 Comments
The following note and corresponding image was sent to us by a friend of the hobby. Please enjoy.
Hi to the good folks at Timothy Hughes Rare & Early Newspapers.
This article (see image below) is from the bottom of the front page of The Evening Herald of Fairhaven and Whatcom, Washington state, Dec. 18, 1903. It is a rare front-pager. I don’t believe the Wright Brothers wanted the publicity being in a race to get the air machine patent, and I don’t think many editors believed the first reports of powered flight.
This paper came from a bound volume. It is in excellent condition and I’m glad the editor had the sense to put it on the front page, even at the bottom. The newspaper is now called The Bellingham Herald.
I’ve been collecting newspapers since 1969 and really enjoy your website, blog and catalog.
Mick Boroughs
MyAuctionFinds’ Interview of Tim…
September 17, 2012 by GuyHeilenman · 1 Comment
MyAuctionFinds recently interviewed Tim (Timothy Hughes Rare & Early Newspapers) to obtain his thoughts on the value of Kennedy Assassination and Obama Election newspapers. Please enjoy:
Next year will be the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. On that fateful day, newspapers around the country – some of them still afternoon papers– blared the story in big bold headlines.
Millions of newspapers were printed and sold, and families scooped them up to read every morsel about a shooting that was unbelievable. Many saved those papers as a reminder of that day and time, likely not thinking that someday they may be worth more than the few coins they paid for them…
Read The Entire Interview At: The value of your JFK and Obama newspapers…
“The United States of America”… humble beginnings?
September 14, 2012 by GuyHeilenman · 2 Comments
One of our rare newspaper friends recently discovered an interesting news item regarding the (potential) first use of “The United States of America” as referring to the American colonies. If true, the first use appeared in a newspaper – a Revolutionary War Era issue of The Virginia Gazette. To add to the intrigue, the origin of the phrase still retains an element of mystery as the article in which it appears was merely signed, A Planter. Thanks to the Byron DeLear of The Christian Science Monitor, and to NBCNEWS.com for bringing this to light. To view the entire article, please see: Who coined ‘United States of America’? New twist to mystery…
The Hatfields & McCoys… on Pinterest…
September 3, 2012 by GuyHeilenman · Leave a Comment
There are few conflicts which have been romanticized as much as the quarter-century battle between two extended families from the boarder mountains of West Virginia and Kentucky. Wikipedia describes the ongoing struggle as follows:
The Hatfield–McCoy feud (1863–91) involved two families of the West Virginia–Kentucky area along the Tug Fork, off the Big Sandy River. The Hatfields of West Virginia were led by William Anderson “Devil Anse” Hatfield while the McCoys of Kentucky were under the leadership of Randolph “Ole Ran’l” McCoy. Those involved in the feud were descended from Ephraim Hatfield (born c. 1765) and William McCoy (born c. 1750). The feud has entered the American folklore lexicon as a metaphor for any bitterly feuding rival parties. More than a century later, the story of the feud has become a modern symbol of the perils of family honor, justice, and vengeance… (view more via Wikipedia)
At Timothy Hughes Rare & Early Newspapers we’ve created a Pinterest Board so that those interested in seeing how these events were reported in the newspapers of the day can enjoy contemporary reports. As we often say, “History is never more fascinating than when it is read from the day it was first reported”.
Please enjoy: Hatfields & McCoys – The Famous Feud… on Pinterest
Newspaper error editions… by Rick Brown
August 27, 2012 by GuyHeilenman · 1 Comment
An Authentic Issue
Rick Brown at Historybuff.com provides some interesting information regarding a couple of known error editions, including the highly collectible “Dewey Defeats Truman” issue of the Chicago Daily Tribune:
The Eleven Editions of the November 3, 1948 Chicago Daily Tribune
You’ve heard of the famous error paper “Dewey Defeats Truman”. Well, they produced ten more error headlines that day.
The Story Behind the “Dewey Defeats Truman” error issue
You’ve heard of the edition, but how did it happen? You’ll find the answer here.
The Tilden-Hayes Election of 1876
“Dewey Defeats Truman” was not the only presidential election error headline. Here’s another one.
Thanks, Rick, for your ongoing contributions to the hobby.
Newspaper Reports of Olympic Proportions…
August 10, 2012 by GuyHeilenman · Leave a Comment
As the 2012 Olympics come to an end, the staff at Timothy Hughes Rare & Early Newspapers thought our readers might appreciate reviewing collectible newspapers with coverage of past Olympics. While considerably more issues are available within our inventory than what is shown, at least the list will provide a snap-shot of such greats as Jesse Owens, Nadia Comaneci, Jim Thorpe, Gertrude Ederle, and more. Please ignore the few scattered issues within this link that do not belong, and enjoy your walk back through Olympic history. View Newspapers With Olympic Coverage