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About Bellows Falls times. [volume] (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965
Bellows Falls, Vt. (1856-1965)
- Title:
- Bellows Falls times. [volume] : (Bellows Falls, Vt.) 1856-1965
- Place of publication:
- Bellows Falls, Vt.
- Geographic coverage:
- Publisher:
- A.N. Swain
- Dates of publication:
- 1856-1965
- Description:
-
- Vol. 1, no. 1 (Aug. 6, 1856)-v. 109, no. 40 (Oct. 7, 1965).
- Frequency:
- Weekly
- Language:
-
-
- English
-
- Subjects:
-
- Bellows Falls (Vt.)--Newspapers.
- Vermont--Bellows Falls.--fast--(OCoLC)fst01222430
- Notes:
-
- "Republican". Cf. Rowell, 1869-1877.
- Also issued on microfilm from Graphic Microfilm of New England, and from the Vermont Public Records Library.
- Archived issues are available in digital format from the Library of Congress Chronicling America online collection.
- Editor: A.N. Swain, 1856-
- Merged with: Vermont journal (Windsor, Vt. : 1844), and: Vermont tribune (Ludlow, Vt.), and: Springfield reporter (Springfield, Vt. : 1878) to form: Connecticut Valley times-reporter.
- Publisher's name recorded in Childs, H. Gazetteer ... of Windham Co., Vt.
- LCCN:
- sn 84022549
- OCLC:
- 10467562
- ISSN:
- 2475-2827
- Succeeding Titles:
- Related Links:
- Holdings:
-
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Bellows Falls times. [volume] October 1, 1856 , Image 1
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Bellows Falls Times
From 1856 to 1965, the Bellows Falls Times served the village of Bellows Falls, Vermont, and surrounding Connecticut River Valley communities. The first issue of the Times appeared in August 1856 under the direction of Albert N. Swain, who had gained experience as a printer and editor with the Vermont Republican. Swain published the four-page weekly for 32 years. The paper regularly included fiction and poetry, miscellany, state news, county court reports, an agricultural column, and pages devoted to editorial content and various local matters. Swain was a staunch antislavery advocate, and during the Civil War the Times was a strong Union paper.
When Swain retired in 1888, a series of proprietors and editors followed in quick succession. The tenures of Frank H. Brown, Edwin A. Start, and Eugene G. Allis were very brief, while Arthur W. Emerson stayed with the Times for several years, from January 1891 through April 1895. During this period, the paper's eight-page issues included more local coverage. In May 1895, peripatetic Vermont newspaper entrepreneur Lewis P. Thayer acquired the Times and hired Willis C. Belknap, a graduate of Dartmouth College and the University of Michigan Law School and a reporter for the Chattanooga Daily Times, to be the editor. Belknap started as a partner with a one-third interest in the Bellows Falls Times, but by November 1896, he was the sole owner.
Anticipating that progressive Times readers were ready for more frequent local news, Thayer and Belknap began to publish the paper twice a week in January 1896. They added an enthusiastic slogan to the masthead that proclaimed, "All the news, while it is news, while it is fresh." The slogan disappeared in the fall of 1899, when the Times once again became a weekly paper. An editorial statement in the New Year's issue of 1900 emphasized that the Times was "first and last a local paper," and urged readers who wanted general news to subscribe to a second paper, such as the Rutland Daily Herald. A network of reporters and correspondents collected an impressive quantity of news, documenting everything from personal social gatherings to labor strikes and plant closings.
Over time, Belknap created a syndicate of weekly papers in the Connecticut River Valley. In 1909, he purchased the Vermont Journal, published in Windsor. The company reorganized as the Vermont Newspaper Corporation in 1921 and acquired the Vermont Tribune (Ludlow) in 1922 and the Springfield Reporter in 1930. After 37 years as editor, Belknap stepped down in 1933, and his sons continued the family association with the Times. In 1963, when Preston D. Belknap was the publisher, the Vermont Times Reporter Company acquired the Bellows Falls, Windsor, Ludlow and Springfield weeklies. In 1965, the weeklies were consolidated into a daily paper, the Connecticut Valley Times-Reporter.
Provided by: University of Vermont