More Stephenville Newspapers Available at Portal to Texas History

On July 18, Dr. Ana Krahmer, Director of the Digital Newspaper Program at the University of North Texas Libraries, spoke at the Dick Smith Library on the Texas Digital Newspaper Program, the largest statewide open digital newspaper access and preservation repository in the United States. It includes over 7 million newspaper pages, spanning west to east, from El Paso to Newton, and north to south, from Higgins to Brownsville, starting in 1813 and moving up to the present day.

Dr. Krahmer was here because of the recent addition of more issues of Stephenville newspapers to the Portal to Texas History, thanks to a cooperative effort by the Tarleton Libraries and the Dublin Public Library.  The latter applied for a Tocker Foundation grant to digitize the newspaper issues from 1923 through 1965.


Earlier Stephenville newspapers, from 1882 through 1922, were digitized thanks to a Ladd & Katherine Hancher Library Foundation grant obtained by the Stephenville Public Library, again in cooperation with Tarleton Libraries.

So if your research requires old (or current) Stephenville newspapers, here's a current description of what to find where:

Stephenville Newspaper Availability (Empire, Tribune, and Empire-Tribune)

Everything through 1965 is available online for free at the Portal to Texas History:  https://texashistory.unt.edu/search/?sort=date_a&fq=untl_collection%3ASTET. 
Note however that there are a number of gaps, because original newspapers (that were microfilmed and then later digitized) were lost or destroyed before microfilming.

Currently all of our microfilm for issues from 1966 through 1980 is at UNT (the University of North Texas) for digitization and addition to the Portal.  We do not have backup copies of these reels.  Please contact our Periodicals department at 254-968-9867 or periodicals@tarleton.edu if you need a reel from this date range so we can coordinate retrieval from UNT.  Note that it may take some time to retrieve the reel(s).


The microfilm for 1981 through 2017 is available in the Periodicals department, on the main floor of the library.  We will be sending reels from 1981 through 1999 to UNT periodically for digitization, and the previous paragraph will apply, but earlier reels will be returned as they are digitized.


We have bound volumes of issues for 1993 through 2011 at our offsite location. These would need to be requested in advance from the Periodicals department to allow time for retrieval.

Full text of selected (not all) issues from 1930-1978 is available via open access through Newspaper Archive:   https://newspaperarchive.com/us/texas/stephenville/stephenville-empire-tribune/. Use the "Browse by Date" to choose from digitized issues. 

Full text for 2000 - present is available through Access World News, a subscription database. If you are a Tarleton student, faculty member, or staff member, you can access it with your NTNET user name and password at any time.  If you are not affiliated with Tarleton, you would have to come in after 3 p.m. on weekdays or any time on weekends and request a guest pass to use this database in the library.  It is also possible a library near you has this database, but you'd need to check with them to see if they have access to this newspaper.  Simply having a subscription to this database does not mean they have the same newspapers we do.

Selected articles are also available from the Stephenville Empire-Tribune website:  http://www.yourstephenvilletx.com/.

Issues from the current year and previous year are available in print, and are stored in-house in the Periodicals department until they have been microfilmed. 

You might also want to check the Tarleton student newspaper, the J-TAC, which began in 1919.  In earlier years it covered a lot of local news.  It is available on the Portal to Texas History: https://texashistory.unt.edu/explore/collections/JTAC/browse/?sort=date_a

The nearby town of Dublin has newspapers from 1882 through 2014 (but with some gaps) available on the Portal: https://texashistory.unt.edu/search/?sort=date_a&explore=true&fq=str_location_county%3AErath+County%2C+TX&fq=untl_institution%3ADUBPU

Finally, here is a link to all Erath County newspapers available on the Portal:  https://texashistory.unt.edu/search/?fq=dc_type%3Atext_newspaper&explore=true&fq=str_location_county%3AErath+County%2C+TX&sort=date_a

Early Stephenville newspaper online at Portal to Texas History

The Stephenville Empire newspapers from 1882 to 1900 are now online at the Portal to Texas History!  The remaining issues of this early title (through 1917), as well as the early Stephenville Tribune (1905 through 1922) will appear in the future, so keep checking the Portal.  Please keep in mind that there are many gaps in those early years.  All Stephenville newspapers the Dick Smith Library has on microfilm through 1922 are being digitized.

This project was funded through a grant provided by the Ladd & Katherine Hancher Library Foundation in September 2016, awarded to the Stephenville Public Library, our partner in this project (they were eligible to apply for the grant; we were not!).

Already users are finding items of interest for their family history research:

"I found an article explaining when my 3X great-grandfather came to Texas from Mississippi!"

"I found my great-great-grandfather telling tall tales about his wheat crop."

"My great-great-grandfather was a member of the Morgan Mill Democratic Club in 1898."

Erath County Sheriff Murdered 140 Years Ago to be Honored

This coming Sunday, June 25, a ceremony will be held to dedicate a monument on the east side of the county courthouse to the first known peace officer in Erath County killed in the line of duty, James Mastin.  Free electronic resources at the Portal to Texas History and the Library of Congress website were used to find out more information about his murder and the aftermath.

Two references to his murder were on the same page (two)¹  of the July 5, 1877, issue of the Weekly Democratic Statesman, published in Austin, Texas, found via the Portal to Texas History.  The search was for "mastin erath" (without the quotes) with results limited to the year 1877.  The first reference started at the bottom of column six and continued at the top of column 7.  Sheriff Maston [sic] was killed by a cattle thief he intended to arrest:

Further on in column seven was a little more detail.  This time Mastin's name was spelled correctly, and it gave the date of the murder, June 25.  The name and a detailed description of the murderer, Bone Wilson, was also given, as well as the fact that a reward was being offered for his capture.  This story also noted Mastin was going to arrest Wilson for stealing a horse (not cattle theft):

A follow-up story² was in the Galveston Daily News of September 27, 1877, on page 4.  In a section with news from Erath County, the Stephenville Empire newspaper was quoted. (In the image below, a number of lines of news not relevant to this case have been blanked out.)  Bone Wilson, alias Napoleon B. Wilson, was killed by Texas Rangers under the command of T. M. Sparks about 20 miles from Fort Chadbourne on September 15, 1877:

A little more detail³ about the murderer’s death comes from the Lampasas Dispatch of September 27, 1877, via the Brownwood Banner.  This one was found by searching the Portal to Texas History for “sheriff erath” (no quotes in the search), as Mastin was sometimes spelled incorrectly.  This article does not even refer to the sheriff by name, and some of the details of Wilson's killing are different.  Both articles note that Wilson's body was taken to Coleman City (just established in 1876). which is about 60 miles east of the fort.

There’s more about Mastin on pages 15-16 of James Pylant’s 2009 book, Sins of the Pioneers⁴.  He was elected sheriff on February 15, 1876, and had survived an earlier attempt on his life in November of that year "when Rufus C. Howie fired a six-shooter at him."

One of Pylant’s sources⁵ is an account of the killing of Mastin’s murderer, Bone Wilson, by one of the Texas Rangers participating, Noah Armstrong.  Armstrong was interviewed sometime between 1936 and 1939, as part of the Folklore Project of the Federal Writers’ Project, a New Deal jobs program that was part of the U.S. Works Progress (later Work Projects) Administration (WPA).  His account of the killing of Bone Wilson starts on the fourth page.


Sources:

¹Weekly Democratic Statesman. (Austin, Tex.), Vol. 6, No. 39, Ed. 1 Thursday, July 5, 1877, newspaper, July 5, 1877; Austin, Texas. (texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth277635/m1/2/?q=mastin+erath: accessed January 21, 2017), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, texashistory.unt.edu; .                                                          

²The Galveston Daily News. (Galveston, Tex.), Vol. 36, No. 161, Ed. 1 Thursday, September 27, 1877, newspaper, September 27, 1877; (texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth464966/m1/4/?q=mastin%20erath: accessed January 21, 2017), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Abilene Library Consortium.

³Beall, W. P. The Lampasas Dispatch (Lampasas, Tex.), Vol. 7, No. 18, Ed. 1 Thursday, September 27, 1877, newspaper, September 27, 1877; (texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth179077/m1/3/?q=sheriff%20erath: accessed January 21, 2017), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, texashistory.unt.edu; crediting The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.

⁴Pylant, James. Sins of the pioneers: crimes & scandals in a small Texas town. Stephenville, TX: Jacobus Books, 2009.

⁵Doyle, Elizabeth, and Noah Armstrong. [Noah Armstrong]. Texas. Manuscript/Mixed Material. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/wpalh002308/. (Accessed January 21, 2017.)

Search the Grassburr Yearbooks

Do you know how to search the Grassburr Yearbook archives online? Through the Portal to Texas History, Tarleton has made over 40 years of Grassburrs available and searchable online.

Currently, the yearbooks from 1970-2012 are available, and more years are added frequently. Once you are on the Portal website, you can browse through the yearbooks, or search inside them to find yourself and your friends. Have fun walking down memory lane this Homecoming!

Anthology: Digitized & New Volume Published

Volume 20, 2014
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Volume 20 of Anthology Published
In case you missed the announcement last week, you should know that the Volume 20 of Anthology has been published and it showcases Tarleton students' exceptional creative talents.

A forum for student prose, poetry, and visual arts, Anthology began to take shape in 1994 through the efforts of two undergraduate students, Cris Edwards and Jimmy Hood, and two English and Languages Department faculty members, Benedda Konvicka and Marilyn Robitaille.

This dedicated team championed their vision, secured university funding and support, solicited and judged submissions, recruited help, designed the journal, and began ensuring their dream would withstand the test of time -- which it definitely has.


Volume1, 1995
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Anthology's first volume was published in 1995; a new volume has been published each April since. Each volume offers carefully selected works and is celebrated with Creative Arts Day festivities that include an editors' luncheon, readings by a renowned author, a contributors' reception, and Editors' Choice Awards. The 2014 Creative Arts Day featured Oklahoma Poet Laureate Nathan Brown as guest speaker.

While Anthology has been available in print and online for quite some time, its distribution range has been fairly limited -- until now. 

A recent Dick Smith Library digitization project has broadened access to this publication and created a searchable version of Anthology through The Portal to Texas History, which is created and maintained by the University of North Texas Libraries' Digital Projects Unit.

How to Access & Search Anthology
-- Click "Services and Resources" on the Dick Smith Library homepage.
-- Choose "Anthology Creative Arts Journal Archive."
   ---- Browse issues by year.
   ---- Search for items by title, creator, or keyword.

Let us know if you have questions: reference@tarleton.edu | 254-968-9249

Final Exam & End-of Semester Tips
Looking for inspiration? Need to get your creative juices energized? Need a mental break? No worries. Help is at hand:
-- Check out the Finals Frenzy resources and follow @TarletonExams on Facebook.
-- Peruse others' tips and share your own with the #TSUFinalsFrenzy hashtag on Twitter.
-- Enjoy a cup of coffee at the library and other hydration stations.
-- Take advantage of the library's extended hours.
-- Contact library staff if you have questions: "Ask a Librarian" | reference@tarleton.edu | 254-968-9249