MESSAGE TO OUR READERS.
March 11, 1887 was the LAST publication date going forward of the Cortland News available at our resource link. We could see it
coming when we posted the hanging of Mrs. Druse. We thought we were near the
end of our rope too. Starting with the great fires in Cortland, the heroic actions of the volunteer fire department, and the establishment of a private water company, we reproduced
articles found in the Cortland News first published from the spring of 1884 to the spring of 1887. We overlooked the years 1881 to 1883, and this period of time may be our next target of interest.
Clayton H. Buell was editor and publisher of the Cortland News until January 1882, when he sold to Frank G. Kinney, a newspaper publisher with a solid reputation. It was Frank G. Kinney who first published the Standard on June 29, 1867. Kinney sold his interest in the Standard to Wesley Hooker on May 1, 1872. Wesley Hooker sold to William Clark in April 1876. Kinney and Buell were contentious Republicans who took shots at Democrats, Republicans and those who stood in between.
The staff at the Cortland Contrarian assumes the water contract was accepted by Village of Cortland voters in March 1887. We are looking for the decision of the libel suit against publisher Strowbridge of the Cortland News. When we find it, we will post it.
The posting of these old newspaper items has been an act of discovery for our staff and readers. There were nights when the Cortland Contrarian editor’s phone rang after 11 p. m., and an excited contributor working on this project would disclose the latest finding. Some of the information we posted was known only to genealogy researchers, historians and librarians.
During the posting of these articles the number of hits to our website more than doubled. We are registered with Google Search, so hits came from Canada, England, Netherlands, Germany, China, India and other countries. Some of these hits were accidental, some intentional--so we presume. The majority of hits came from the United States. Our blog statistics demonstrate a high count for local and regional history postings, and for the occasional tall-tales such as Skunked and Three-legged Mouse. Many posts were read a second or third time by a single unknown reader.
The newspaper articles we posted were past copyright protection, and our staff copied and reproduced them. We maintained a high degree of accuracy in the process. Occasionally we allowed the letter t as an unwanted substitute for the letter f but that was a flaw in optical character recognition software and subsequent editor blindness. Unlike the New York Times, we don’t claim copyright for our work reproducing archived news no longer under copyright. We did the work as a public service. The newspaper articles that were past copyright protection and reproduced in the pages of our blog may be copied and reproduced by others. We encourage historical societies and researchers to make use of them.
We wish to thank especially Mr. Tom Tryniski of Fulton, N. Y. His exceptional website (www.fultonhistory.com) provides the public with free access to digital archives of thousands of old newspapers. He stipulates non-commercial use. If you are a researcher and you use his website, please consider a donation to Tom so that he can keep and expand his digital archives.
Clayton H. Buell was editor and publisher of the Cortland News until January 1882, when he sold to Frank G. Kinney, a newspaper publisher with a solid reputation. It was Frank G. Kinney who first published the Standard on June 29, 1867. Kinney sold his interest in the Standard to Wesley Hooker on May 1, 1872. Wesley Hooker sold to William Clark in April 1876. Kinney and Buell were contentious Republicans who took shots at Democrats, Republicans and those who stood in between.
The staff at the Cortland Contrarian assumes the water contract was accepted by Village of Cortland voters in March 1887. We are looking for the decision of the libel suit against publisher Strowbridge of the Cortland News. When we find it, we will post it.
The posting of these old newspaper items has been an act of discovery for our staff and readers. There were nights when the Cortland Contrarian editor’s phone rang after 11 p. m., and an excited contributor working on this project would disclose the latest finding. Some of the information we posted was known only to genealogy researchers, historians and librarians.
During the posting of these articles the number of hits to our website more than doubled. We are registered with Google Search, so hits came from Canada, England, Netherlands, Germany, China, India and other countries. Some of these hits were accidental, some intentional--so we presume. The majority of hits came from the United States. Our blog statistics demonstrate a high count for local and regional history postings, and for the occasional tall-tales such as Skunked and Three-legged Mouse. Many posts were read a second or third time by a single unknown reader.
The newspaper articles we posted were past copyright protection, and our staff copied and reproduced them. We maintained a high degree of accuracy in the process. Occasionally we allowed the letter t as an unwanted substitute for the letter f but that was a flaw in optical character recognition software and subsequent editor blindness. Unlike the New York Times, we don’t claim copyright for our work reproducing archived news no longer under copyright. We did the work as a public service. The newspaper articles that were past copyright protection and reproduced in the pages of our blog may be copied and reproduced by others. We encourage historical societies and researchers to make use of them.
We wish to thank especially Mr. Tom Tryniski of Fulton, N. Y. His exceptional website (www.fultonhistory.com) provides the public with free access to digital archives of thousands of old newspapers. He stipulates non-commercial use. If you are a researcher and you use his website, please consider a donation to Tom so that he can keep and expand his digital archives.
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