Georgia Historic Newspapers – Page 14

Through a partnership with the Houston County Public Library System, the Digital Library of Georgia has completed the final phase of digitization of the Houston Home Journal, a project that has lasted nearly five years. Issues of the newspaper are now available online at the Georgia Historic Newspapers website: gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/.

This project was made possible by the generous donations and support of the following: The estate of Alice L. Gilbert (former Perry Librarian), Flint Energies Foundation, The Friends of the Houston County Public Library, and the Houston Home Journal.

Over the past five years, the DLG has digitized 8,166 issues or 129,029 pages of the Houston Home Journal, dating from 1870 to 2008. This represents the largest date span of any title available on the Georgia Historic Newspapers website. It also amounts to the second greatest number of issues of any newspaper title on the website.

John T. Waterman founded the Houston Home Journal in Perry in December 1870. The Hodges family maintained ownership of the publication for over sixty years, before selling it in 1946. The Houston Home Journal remains the legal organ for Houston County and continues publication as the county’s oldest continually operated business.

This phase of the newspaper digitization project includes five Houston County titles from 1993-2008, a total of 1,983 issues, or 61,743 pages. The newly available titles are available at gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/counties/houston/

Georgette Lipford, president of the Central Georgia Genealogical Society and member of the Friends of the Houston County Public Library System notes:

“The recently completed digitization project of the Houston Home Journal and its addition to the Georgia Historic Newspapers website represents an absolute treasure for anyone researching family in Houston County. Sometimes a newspaper notice is the only surviving document of an ancestor’s existence. These issues of the HHJ have obituaries, wedding announcements, legal notices, employment news, hospitalizations, and photographs, all of which tell an ancestor’s or descendant’s story. What previously may have taken hours of searching to locate can now be found with a couple of mouse clicks and it’s freely available to genealogists across the country!“

Selected images

Houston Times Journal, March 22, 1995

“Robins named best AF base in the world”

“The day the president came to town”

gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/lccn/sn94002550/1995-03-22/ed-1/seq-1/

Houston Home Journal, December 24, 2002

Photographs of the Houston Home Journal offices.

gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/lccn/sn99000076/2002-12-24/ed-1/seq-22

About Houston County Public Library System

The Houston County Public Library System is bridging yesterday and tomorrow with information and discovery. The purpose of the Houston County Public Library System is to offer a full program of library services to all citizens of Houston County and the surrounding communities in order to meet their informational, educational, and recreational needs. Visit the library at houpl.org/.

My interest in Georgia photographers and visiting photographers who worked in Georgia, as well as their associates, began in the late 1970s. Throughout my career as an archivist and librarian I built upon this interest when time allowed. When I retired, this became a full-time pursuit, and since 2013, I have worked on researching and writing about these photographers in my blog Hunting and Gathering.

For my Georgia Photographers Documentation Project, I use many research sources, and my database now has close to 3,700 records, documenting about 2,200 photographers. One of my all-time favorite sources, the DLG’s Georgia Historic Newspapers collection allows me to search for advertisements, notices of formed or dissolved partnerships, and personal information, including obituaries on these photographers and their associates. I also find some wonderful articles about photography itself.

The addition of so many smaller town and city newspapers to this collection of historic newspapers has proven to be great fun! In the last week alone, I turned up four more women who worked in the profession just after the turn-of-the century–Amanda Cain in north Georgia, Mrs. Clark (possibly Mrs. H.S.) in east Georgia, Mrs. W. B. Standifer in southwest Georgia, and Effie West in southeast Georgia. Mrs. Standifer set aside Wednesday and Saturday especially for her African American customers, which is not as uncommon as it sounds, and I have written and spoken on this topic. Now I will pursue these women’s names both in and out of the DLG’s Georgia Historic Newspapers collection to flesh out each record in my database which now documents over 260 women.

The other excitement for me these past few weeks has been the exploration of the added Columbus and Macon city directories which were made available this spring via the DLG in partnership with the Georgia Public Library Service City directories are another “must-have” in my research. I already had a lot of the directory information from these two cities, but I lacked the earlier years, and that is exactly what I found in this new resource–Columbus city directories beginning in 1859, and Macon’s beginning in 1860. It took me about a week to finish that task, but I was able to find new advertisements, and add or correct work years and work addresses for photographers and their associates working in those two cities.

I have used the resources of the Digital Library of Georgia so often the last ten years, I know I have a stake in it, and all Georgians do. The fact that all this information is available to those in and out of state for free is wonderful. In my blog posts I try to remember to thank the DLG when I use any of the excellent data that they make available to us. I look forward to the upcoming new additions!

—E. Lee Eltzroth, independent scholar

https://georgia-photographers.com/,

and president / CEO, Friends of the Peachtree City Library

Tag: Georgia Historic Newspapers

Issues of the Houston Home Journal dating from 1993 to 2008 are now freely available at the Georgia Historic Newspapers website

Filling in the Blanks — Researching Georgia Photographers