The Pope County Historical Society recently announced online access to early issues of Glenwood and Villard newspapers.

 Special thanks to the PCHS members, Bob and Kathy Jacobs and Bob and Nancy Gandrud for making this possible. This project made digital copies of all of our newspaper holdings from the earliest titles through 1896, it was announced by the PCHS.

There were several Glenwood newspaper titles which consolidated under the Glenwood Herald by 1889, including the Glenwood Eagle, Messenger, and Times, and the Pope County Press. This project includes a Villard Monitor issue from 1886 as well. Existing copies of these newspapers are held at the Minnesota History Center on microfilm. The digital copies are impressively clear. “It’s especially great that you can search the digital versions of the newspapers by word to help find stories related to local families and events,” said Museum director, Merlin Peterson.

Completing this project is part of a long range plan to digitize all local newspapers up to 1930. The project started with the Starbuck Times, and issues of the Times through 1928 are now available on the Digital Newspaper Hub. Our goal is to digitize at least 4,000 newspaper pages per year. The cost is $1 per page. The Brang Foundation has provided matching funds for the Starbuck Times newspapers.

The newspapers are digitized by the Minnesota Historical Society and these early newspapers can be found on the Society’s Digital Newspaper Hub: newspapers.mnhs.org

“Digitizing a newspaper like The Villard Monitor brings forward the history of the community, its people, places, and events. This project with the Pope County Historical Society has been a great opportunity to make Glenwood and Villard history accessible online, and we look forward to the next phase of digitization,” said Anne Levin, Collections Digitization Manager at the Minnesota Historical Society.

The Minnesota Historical Society’s Minnesota Digital Newspaper Hub is a free service supported by the Legacy Amendment to preserve Minnesota history and cultural heritage and share Minnesota’s stories.