We are pleased to announce that we’ve added the Breese Journal to our archives! Breese, Illinois, is located in Clinton County in South Central Illinois. We have issues dating back to 1923 when Breese had a population of around 2,000. The headlines back then announced the installation of the town’s first stop signs and plans to build a sewer system (although according to this clipping outhouses were still around for another 35 years!)

Breese Families Without Food During the Depression

The city of Breese was founded in 1855 and settled in part by German immigrants who were drawn to the area’s fertile farmland. It was named after Sidney Breese, a senator and contemporary to Abraham Lincoln. The city is located about 40 miles from downtown St. Louis, so if you have ancestors from Eastern Missouri you might find them mentioned in this paper.

During the Depression, Breese established a Mayor’s Relief Committee to provide food and clothing for the town’s unemployed. Several years later, in 1940, as the world became embroiled in war, Clinton County resident William August Klasing enlisted in the US Navy. He was serving on the USS Oklahoma when Pearl Harbor was bombed, becoming Clinton County’s first casualty of war. Using DNA, last year his remains were identified and returned home after 78 years.  

The Breese Journal is a wonderful resource for researching ancestors that lived in the area. This clipping shows all the births and deaths in Breese during 1930! The paper reported when residents spent time in the hospital or made a visit to grandma, and notable events like when the Westermann family purchased a new Studebaker. Each page provides a historical snapshot of the time.

Many of the area’s residents worked in the railroad and mining industry. You can learn about Breese’s first coal mine that opened in the 1800s, and mining tragedies such as the East Mine accident in 1906.

The Breese Journal includes news from nearby communities including Staunton, Trenton, Aviston, Germantown, Beckemeyer, Carlyle, and others.

Start searching the pages of the Breese Journal today on Newspapers.com!

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15 thoughts on “New Paper from Illinois!

  1. Please consider adding the Youngstown Vindicator from Youngstown Ohio.. It is an old newspaper that has covered many events in an evolving metropolitan area for many years.

    1. My comment didn’t make it thru the censors. Youngstown Vindicator is on Google archives if you search for Google Newspapers (Not Google News) News dot Google dot com /newspapers.

    2. Here is the 2nd half. https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=jtusTj6o6osC 1981 – 2009. 7,501 images.

      Google abandoned this like this site did. This site only does existing papers with only 2020 coverage doing the same papers over and over.

      This site needs a PIC (Person in Charge) or a MIC to keep things going.

      This is how Google operates almost all robots with only very few staff and they meet once a year to decide without any follow ups.

      That’s why Google News Archive got abandoned as no one oversaw it much like Glasses,Pixel Books,Smart Cars that crash into buses during testing,Stadia which you can find the problems on Metal Jesus Rock’s channel,etc.

      Steam tried it too with their own console called The Steam Box and it almost did them in so they pulled out. The console only did the dumb games that would be on Linux.

  2. On a visit to central Illinois I was told about my host’s grandfather having been a tiler. Thinking Tyler was a last name, I became perplexed by his story as it did not seem to make sense until I asked him to clarify. He explained that the low ground was boggy and needed a tiler to lay tiles w the upper curved tile with holes and the lower curved tile w/o holes. He found the lay of the land and laid tiles to drain the excess water off the property to make it arable

  3. You should add The Evening Courier from Tamaqua, Pa. The paper no longer exists. It was gobbled up by a larger regional paper.

  4. I would love it if they would add Newton, Illinois newspaper. The only place you can read it is at the Library in Newton

  5. I had to laugh when I read that the town’s outhouses were around for another 25 years. I was born in 1958, and we didn’t have andy indoor plumbing – just a pump in the kitchen sink – until we moved in March of 1966. We were not living in a small town; when we moved, it was only about two miles away. I had never seen a shower before!

    1. Hi Carol, I did a quick search for “Peoria” in the Breese Journal and got over 4,000 matches dating from 1924-current.

  6. I would love to see more small town newspapers from Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. But I have been totally ignored.

    1. Hi Margaret, I promise you haven’t been ignored. I too have ancestors from Westmoreland County and would also love to see those papers. There are numerous factors involved in getting new content and we are always working on adding more. If you are familiar with specific Westmoreland titles, you can help us out by finding out if those archives still exist and where they are held.

  7. Please consider Vermilion County, Illinois also Champaign County,Illinois. Thank you

  8. See if you can put on the Owensboro (KY) Monitor. There are some copies in our library from the 1860’s. You apparently do not have the Owensboro Messenger or the Owensboro Inquirer.
    Dr. Tom Sabetta

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