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Chronicling America
National Endowment for the Humanities

Newspaper The Beatrice Daily Express (Beatrice, Neb.) 1884-1924

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About The Beatrice Daily Express (Beatrice, Neb.) 1884-1924

Published six days a week over the course of forty years, the Beatrice Daily Express was an intimate and detailed portrait of an eastern Nebraska town as it boomed, faltered, and bounced back. Sunday was the lone day of the week when the Express fell silent. For the first half of its run, the Beatrice Daily Express was typically a simple four-page daily before expanding to a six-page paper. The cost of an annual subscription via mail reliably sat at $3.00. The Beatrice Daily Express provided an invaluable window into the news items that mattered most every day on the local, national, and international levels.

The Beatrice Daily Express, founded in 1884, grew out of a similarly named paper from the 1870s, the Beatrice Express. M.A. Brown was the initial leader of the Daily Express before a long succession of editors over the next four decades. Parallel to the Daily Express was a revolving series of weekly versions of the paper, including the Beatrice Weekly Express and the Semi-Weekly Express.

The Beatrice Daily Express was a proud suffragette publication. The staff of the Express featured content specifically tailored to women in a regular Woman’s World column. For one week in 1905, the paper was run each day by a different woman, giving them complete editorial control over that day’s content. As the Nebraska State Journal quoted the Express‘s announcement of the arrangement, “Not because we are tired…but because we defer to the ambitious, thinking women of our city, we have opened our editorial columns, and next week six well known and prominent ladies of Beatrice will edit the Express.” The Express regularly featured the activities of Clara B. Colby, noted suffragette, publisher of the Woman’s Tribune, and one-time resident of Beatrice.

Like much of the country, hard times found Beatrice in the mid-1890s. This was due partly to the Panic of 1893 but more so to crop failures and cratering prices throughout Nebraska. According to the census, Beatrice had nearly 14,000 residents in 1890, but by 1900 this number had nearly halved. The Daily Express became cheerleader for the battered community, with a steady drumbeat of optimism, stating on January 12, 1894 that, “One year ago Beatrice with her agricultural, manufacturing and railroad resources, was a flourishing, prosperous city, and this she would be today but for the senseless scare, and lack of confidence resulting from last summer’s panic, affecting all sections of the country alike. But this condition cannot long obtain, it is even now yielding to the resistless spirit and energy of the people.”

The paper reached its end in April 1924 when it was absorbed by the Beatrice Daily Sun. By June of that year the Lincoln Star wrote about “the machinery and equipment of the old Beatrice Daily Express” being sold by the Sun’s editor, closing the era of the Daily Express.

Provided By: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE

About this Newspaper

Title

  • The Beatrice Daily Express (Beatrice, Neb.) 1884-1924

Dates of Publication

  • 1884-1924

Created / Published

  • Beatrice, Neb. : M.A. Brown, -1924.

Headings

  • -  Gage County (Neb.)--Newspapers
  • -  Nebraska--Gage County
  • -  United States--Nebraska--Gage--Beatrice

Genre

  • Newspapers

Notes

  • -  Daily (except Sun.)
  • -  Began in 1884.
  • -  -v. 39, no. 23 (Apr. 26, 1924).
  • -  "Republican." Cf. Ayer, 1885.
  • -  Archived issues are available in digital format from the Library of Congress Chronicling America online collection.
  • -  Other eds.: Beatrice weekly express, 1884-1901, Beatrice semi-weekly express, 1901-1903, Semi-weekly express (Beatrice, Neb.), 1903-1906, Weekly express (Beatrice, Neb.), 1906-1909, Semi-weekly express (Beatrice, Neb. : 1909), 1909-1911, and: Beatrice weekly express (Beatrice, Neb. : 1911), 1911-1912.
  • -  Description based on: 1st year, no. 253 (Nov. 11, 1884).
  • -  Beatrice daily sun

Medium

  • volumes : illustrations ; 69 cm

Call Number/Physical Location

  • Newspaper

Digital Id

Library of Congress Control Number

  • sn84020107

OCLC Number

  • 10361670

ISSN Number

  • 2997-8920

Additional Metadata Formats

Availability

Rights & Access

The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety. Any newspapers in Chronicling America that were published less than 95 years ago are also believed to be in the public domain, but may contain some copyrighted third party materials. Researchers using newspapers published less than 95 years ago should be alert for modern content (for example, registered and renewed for copyright and published with notice) that may be copyrighted. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.

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Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

The Beatrice Daily Express Beatrice, Neb. -1924. (Beatrice, NE), Jan. 1 1884. https://aj.sunback.homes/item/sn84020107/.

APA citation style:

(1884, January 1) The Beatrice Daily Express Beatrice, Neb. -1924. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://aj.sunback.homes/item/sn84020107/.

MLA citation style:

The Beatrice Daily Express Beatrice, Neb. -1924. (Beatrice, NE) 1 Jan. 1884. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, aj.sunback.homes/item/sn84020107/.