Typically, curators purchase collection material from dealers, auctions, and bookfairs. Less common is the unsolicited offer from someone who found something in their house. Early this past summer [2024], a woman from West Virginia called AAS – on the recommendation of a dealer she had consulted – about a newspaper she found among other old papers. She provided a nice description of the Anti-Slavery True Witness, which appeared to be unrecorded. No one had a copy. After she sought a third-party appraisal, she offered to sell it to AAS at an agreed price.
The Anti-Slavery True Witness is an abolitionist newspaper from the south-eastern part of Ohio, near Zanesville, where even today the population is under 2,500. It succeeded the Concord Free Press, whose previous proprietor had financial problems and sold it to M. Wilkins at the end of 1849. Wilkins had less luck, and the paper folded in just under a year. This issue contains several articles written exclusively for this paper including a description of a Black school in Fairview, OH, the kidnapping of a formerly enslaved person back to Georgia, and an anti-slavery meeting in West Liberty, OH. AAS serials cataloger Alicia Murphy uncovered information about the paper while creating the catalog record. Acquiring unrecorded titles is a high priority for the newspaper collection. Doing so adds to the rich picture of newspaper history and bibliography and creates access for researchers.
~ Vincent Golden, Curator of Newspapers and Periodicals
