The Genesee News

Contents: About the Collection | A Short History | Using the PDFs | Feedback | Tech

About the Collection

This collection contains the Genesee News and predecessor newspapers, the Recorder and Advertiser, covering 80 years from the arrival of the railroad and the beginning of New Genesee, ID in 1888 to 1968 when the News was merged with the Kendrick Gazette.

The digital files (.pdf) were compiled by scanning the microfilm of the papers prepared in the 1970s and ‘80s by the Idaho State Historical Society (ISHS). A Community Grant from the ISHS paid for the conversion.

There is a separate .pdf (Adobe Acrobat) file for each year and the files were indexed by the weekly date of the papers by Earl H. Bennett, Genesee City Historian. Missing issues are also noted in the indices. These data are available online via the University of Idaho Library, Moscow, ID. The data on disk is available at the Genesee City Library, the Genesee High school library and Earl H. Bennett, City Historian, Genesee, ID.

Of note is file 1898OCRSpecEd.pdf. This was an experimental issue that contains many pictures of Genesee people and places. Pictures in newspapers of this period were rare as it was difficult and expensive to print photographs.

Please address all comments to Earl H. Bennett, City Historian, P.O. Box 157, Genesee, ID 83832. phone: 208-285-1354; email: bennett@uidaho.edu

A Short History

The following paragraph of the early history of the Genesee News was abstracted from a paper by Keith Armstrong in 1934. Mr. Armstrong had worked briefly for the News.

"The first issue of the Genesee Advertiser was published on August 4, 1888 with J.L.G Mays as editor. It was a 6-column handset paper. It followed quickly on the heels of the arrival of the Spokane and Palouse Railroad into New Genesee in April of that year. By November the paper had changed hands with E. R. Wiswall in charge. Mr. Wiswall left for Spokane and the paper was under the care of T. Barton by April 1889 and again had changed hands to C. C. Neal by October of that year. The paper’s name was changed to the Genesee Recorder with C. M. Poor and R. W. Jenkins in charge by May 1891 with Mr., Poor taking over full control after just a few weeks. By May of 1892, Charles Power and J. W. Hopp had taken over. The paper became the Genesee News on June 17, 1892 and the size increased from six to seven columns. It changed back to six columns and was enlarged to 8 pages on Oct. 5, 1894. By 1895 an entire page was devoted to national and world news. The first halftone appeared on January 17, 1901. By 1902, Mr. Power was in charge of the paper. On November 5, 1909, H. W. Brune was the owner as Mr. Power sold out and moved to Spokane. P. C. McCreary took over on Jan. 3, 1913. An interim director, Arthur H. Potsch managed the paper for a while in 1926 and E. D Pederson was the new owner by November 1928."

Pederson would own the News until 1954 when the paper was purchased and published by William D. Roth, his wife, Jane and their son Bill. In August 1968 the Roths bought the Kendrick Gazette from William L. McCreary and announced that the Gazette and Genesee News would be merged under the banner of the Kendrick Gazette-News. William McCreary was the son of P. C. McCreary who owned the News in 1913 and then moved to Kendrick to manage the Gazette. After William Roth died, his son Bill took over the paper. He got out of the business for a while in 1985 selling the paper’s name and subscriber list to the Whitman-Latah Republic until that paper failed. Bill restarted the Kendrick paper as the Gazette in 1987 and it finally closed for good in 1998.

Using the PDFs

The PDFs have built in bookmarks to provide an index to individual issues. After downloading a .pdf file for a particular year using Adobe Acrobat, open the index by clicking on the page icon with a bent corner and a blue bookmarker on the left-hand side of the page. A drop-down index opens showing the date of each paper for that year. Each file is indexed by date in the format- 6/15/1914 (June 15, 1914). Missing issues are also noted. Clicking on the index for a particular date takes you to that issue. To close the index, click the small arrow to the right in the box containing the word “Bookmarks.”

To change the magnification of the document, click the arrow next to the + and – in the menu bar at the top of the document.

To move from page to page, click on the arrows at the top and bottom of the column on the right side of the page. Clicking in the white space in this column above or below the small box will also move the entire page up or down. You can also move the page using the page up or down keys on the keyboard.

Feedback

If you are a copyright owner or otherwise have exclusive control over materials presently available through this collection and do not wish your materials to be available through this website, please let us know. To make a takedown request, please reach out to Devin Becker at dbecker@uidaho.edu.