All the News That's Fit to Exhibit
The St. Louis Mercantile Library at UMSL opened earlier this week an exhibit devoted to historic newspapers. Headlines of History: Historic Newspapers of St. Louis and the World Through the Centuries at the St. Louis Mercantile Library Association is the third in a planned tetralogy of exhibitions building to the 175th anniversary of the St. Louis Mercantile Library, a membership library that is, according to its website, "the oldest library west of the Mississippi."
The library's special collections contain more than one hundred historical newspaper titles and include the newspaper and printing morgue of the St. Louis Globe Democrat. This exhibition focuses on the library's important newspaper holdings and features such items as the first known issue of the Missouri Gazette, the oldest newspaper printed west of the Mississippi, and an issue of the Pennsylvania Ledger from July 13, 1776 marking the first printing of the Declaration of Independence in a newspaper.
A national symposium tentatively scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 17, 2018, titled "From Franklin to Pulitzer; Pioneer Newspapers and News Pioneers," will complement the exhibition, which runs through September 2019.
Image: Mexican News, engraving by Alfred Jones, after Richard Caton Woodville. New York, 1853. Courtesy of St. Louis Mercantile Library.
