Archive Record

Metadata

Catalog Number

NWS 1932.06

Title

Winchester Historical [& Genealogical] Society Papers
Winchester Town History Series: Clippings from The Winchester Press 1901-1903 and The Winchester Star 1903
& First Congregational Church History Series: Clippings from The Winchester Press 1901

Collection

Printed Material

Object Name

Newspaper

Scope & Content

This collection derives from several collections of newspaper clippings on Winchester history published in The Winchester Press and The Winchester Star. One collection of clipped articles, originally kept in individual envelopes, includes a 145-part series about town history and a series of 31 articles about First Congregational Church history. The entire church series ran in The Winchester Press. The town series ran from Feb. 22, 1901 to Dec. 19, 1902 in the Press and continued from Jan. 2, 1903 to Dec. 25, 1903 in The Winchester Star. Beginning with the eighth article, this series acquired the subtitle The Winchester Historical Society and its Proceedings.
A second set of clippings, pasted into 8 volumes of scrapbooks (of which one is missing), includes only the town history articles. There are also three further scrapbooks, one devoted to the Church History series and the other two filled with Town History clippings. The Church history scrapbook and one of the Town history scrapbooks were possibly kept by the same person, given that they are similarly pasted-headings cut off, each column pasted on one side only, overlapping nine columns on each page so the reader needs to lift each column from the side to see the next. While some of the collections are incomplete, taken all together they contain all of the history articles.

Some of the articles are reprints of articles in The Winchester Record. Some other articles use sections of previously published articles. However, other articles were apparently newly published, the point being that the Winchester Press and Winchester Record do not duplicate each other, except in some parts.

Admin/Biographical History

The identities of the people who kept the clippings and scrapbooks are unknown, but were probably members of the Winchester Historical & Genealogical Society, the town's first historians and historical collectors. Two customary pieces of business at their meetings were the reading of papers and announcement of donations (the beginnings of the current Winchester Archival Center collections). Many of the papers were published in the journal, The Winchester Record; however, more were included in the newspaper series and some others were revised or updated when published in The Winchester Press.

The Winchester Press was published from Oct. 1900 to Dec. 1902. The Town History series began with the Feb. 22, 1901 issue, and the church of history series with the March 1, 1901 issue. Abijah Thompson, first president of the then disbanded WHGS, "communicated" both series of articles to the papers. He used the organizational title Winchester Historical Society in the Press, although the full name was Winchester Historical & Genealogical Society.

Copyrights

Permission to publish material from this collection is subject to approval by the Town of Winchester.

Finding Aids

A finding aid with detailed information about the contents of the collection is available. Contact the Archives for a copy.

Archive Record

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