Did you know?
Occasionally, I’ll get an email, or somebody will simply ask me when they see me, how I find all of those bits of information I write about in these “Did You Know?” columns.
The answer is simple, sort of.
First, this is the 176th column I’ve written that has carried the title “Did You Know?”
That means I’ve researched thousands of newspapers from around the world for more than three years.
It’s not only fun, it’s become a true passion.
The bulk of that research has been conducted at http://newspaperarchive.com.
That web site, which boasts of containing “tens of millions of newspaper pages from 1753 to present,” is where I begin my weekly searches.
If you’d like to visit newspaperarchive.com, please be aware it’s a paid web site. If you decide to subscribe to it (for a small yearly, semi-annual or 3-month fee), you will have access to a searchable database that will enable to you read and even download exact copies of newspapers that appear as they were first published.
I wouldn’t worry about such technical terms as a “searchable database.”
All it means is if you log-on to newspaperarchive.com, you can type the word “Uniontown” into a little box, and you’ll be able to start reading the thousands of newspapers that mention our town.
I just did that. The first result I found is dated Sept. 25, 1825. On that day, there was a story in the Gettysburg (Pa) Republican Compiler about the meeting that had been conducted by Uniontowners Dr. Daniel Sturgeon and Richard Beeson at the Fayette County courthouse.
They had offered a resolution that would lead to a convention that would change the Pennsylvania state constitution.
The earliest Uniontown newspaper available is from the Dec. 17, 1888 edition of the Uniontown Evening Standard – the day it was reported that Frank Cooley of the notorious Cooley gang was jailed.
If you’d like to do a little research for free, here are a few online resources that can provide you with all manner of historical information.
Just go to http://google.com, and type the words “Google Magazines” (minus the quotation marks), then hit enter on your keyboard.
Google has posted 150 archived magazines that you can view in their entirety.
While many of those publications are obscure (the Canadian Mathematical Bulletin, or the Diarrhoeal Diseases Research, for instance) – you can view old Life and Billboard Magazines too.
I found in the Oct. 17, 1960 edition of Billboard, that Uniontown was the site of the very first trials for FM stereo radio.
While the Federal Communications Commission later declined to give license to the methods used in the Uniontown trials, it can still be called the pioneering home of FM stereo.
In another edition of Billboard Magazine, I discovered that a Uniontown native, Richard Nader, is one of the nation’s leaders in producing Rock ‘n Roll Oldies and Revival shows.
Nader (who is still quite active in the Rock ‘n Roll revival business) was featured in a story about the 55 shows he would produce in 1972 alone.
“While still in high school in Uniontown, Pa. during the late 1950’s, Nader was a part-time disc jockey playing all of the stars of his current revivals,” that article said.
If you search through the archives of New York Magazine you can find a comprehensive 11-page article about the life and tragic death of Uniontown native Alexis Welsh that was published on Aug. 19, 1991.
In the March 1983 edition of the NAACP publication of “The Crisis,” you can read the story about Uniontown’s late Dr. Fred L. Vaughns.
“Dentist Dedicates Life to Work, Humanity,” was the headline to a story about the man who fought for racial equality during most of his adult life.
He’s shown standing in front of the East End United Community Center that was, then, housed on the corners of Grant and Main streets.
Another interesting online find is at Google books. Simply go to http://google.com, type the words “Google books” (minus the quotation marks), and you’ll have access to all of the publications (hundreds of them) in the Google books archives that contain the word “Uniontown.”
For instance, I found one publication titled “The Inland Printer,” which is archived at the University of Minnesota’s Library, which was originally published in 1913.
I discovered on page 428 of that publication that a Uniontown newspaper – The Fayette Gazette and Union Advertiser – was the third newspaper to be published in southwestern Pennsylvania.
The first issue of the Fayette Gazette was on Friday, Jan. 12, 1797.
According to the Inland Printer, the yearly subscription price in those days was 15 shillings.
In the “Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, Volume 4,” published in 1921, I found a chapter titled “The Lincolns of Fayette County, Pennsylvania,” by John S. Ritenour.
“Mordecai Lincoln, who settled in North Union township, Fayette County, Pa. about four miles from Uniontown, in the year 1792, and who died and is buried there, was a brother of John Lincoln, the great grandfather of Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States,” was the opening paragraph of that chapter.
Also there is a complete copy of Thomas Hadden’s excellent “A History of Uniontown: the county seat of Fayette County, Pennsylvania,” that can be found under the Google books listings.
Hadden mentioned Abraham Lincoln a number of times too.
“Abraham Lincoln was elected to congress in 1846 and in journeying to Washington City he had occasion to stop at Uniontown to transact some business with Daniel Downer, Esq and nothing unusual was thought of the occurrence as Mr Lincoln had not as yet acquired national reputation,” Hadden wrote on 773.
If you don’t believe me, look it up. I’d be quite happy if you did.