Back Issues of the News Online 1871 to 1979

Back Issues of the News Online 1871 to 1979

The Chattooga County Historical Society is pleased to announce that The Summerville News back issues—from the beginning through December 1979—are now indexed and freely accessible at the Georgia Historic Newspapers website.  The archive starts with June 1871 issues of The Chattooga Advertiser, a forerunner of the News. Check it out and read about your own family as well as thecommunities, schools and businesses of Chattooga County.

State Grant and Local Funding

A state grant from the UGA Digital Library facilitated scanning and indexing all issues up through 1930.  Then the Historical Society, in cooperation with the News and publisher Gene Espy (with generous contributions from the Tillotson Menlo Foundation),completed the next phase (through April 1949) in 2021.

Now, thanks to additional funding from Tillotson as well as from the Everett and Dorothy Harlow Lunsford family and from the Historical Society, we have digitized all issues through the end of 1979.  The Society’s long-term goal is to have all the county’s historical newspapers, including The Trion Facts, eventually available free of charge to all researchers.

Treasure Trove of County History

Historical Society president Gene McGinnis said, “It’s really been a fantastic project for us. The Chattooga/Summerville News project now spans well over a century of county happenings. There are 47,188 pages included online–from 4,233 issues!  This unlocks an addictive array of community news from the past century and a half of our county.”

The website is not just a treasure trove for Chattooga County.  Readers can access the Georgia Historical Newspapers website athttps://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/ and find 3.1 million pages of historic Georgia newspapers.  

Statewide Newspapers Available

The Archive is a project of the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG), a part of Georgia’s Virtual Library GALILEO and is based at the University of Georgia Libraries. Since 2007, the DLG has partnered with universities, archives, public libraries, historical societies, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions to digitize historical newspapers from around the state.

Historical Society board member Cynthia Hubler commented, “Our organizational mission is to promote, preserve, and protect the history of Chattooga County. The archive images are clear, and the index created through the digitization process is thorough and easy to use.  The statewide newspapers project is a wonderful resource for anyone who is researching local and family history.”

Historical Society Welcomes You

All meetings of the Chattooga County Historical Society are free and open to the public. Membership is comprised of almost 300 families, both from inside and outside the county. Family memberships in the organization are $20.00 per year and include a quarterly publication. Contact the Society at P.O. Box 626, Summerville or via email at chattoogahistory@outlook.com.