More than half a century of the Roxbury Times and 12 more years of the Catskill Mountain News have been added to the New York State Historic Newspapers website, created and administered by the Northern New York Library Network in partnership with the Empire State Library Network..
Their placement online allows anyone anywhere to search, read and print these valuable chronicles of local history. The Times and the News are among 19 Delaware County titles on the website, NYSHistoricNewspapers.org.
Roxbury Town Historian Anthony Liberatore coordinated the digitization of microfilm of the Times from Sept. 19, 1895 to June 16, 1951. The O’Connor Foundation, the Town of Roxbury and historian/author Larry Zuidema funded the Roxbury project. The original newspapers were transferred to microfilm in 1967 through the efforts of Steve Enderlin, and have been available to read on a microfilm viewer in the History Room at the Roxbury Library. Thanks go to Wendy Morrison for getting that microfilm to Potsdam for digitization.
“I was hesitant to ship the microfilm for fear of it being lost in transit, so I was going to take a five-hour drive, one way, to drop it off in person,” the historian said. “The night before I was going to go, someone mentioned to me that Wendy, a Roxbury resident, was taking her son Brett back to Clarkson University, which is also in Potsdam. She agreed to drop off the microfilm which saved me from driving the 10-hour round trip!”
The Historical Society of the Town of Middletown had previously preserved the CMN from 1902 through 1973. In 2022, HSM arranged to have the bound issues from 1974 through 1985 microfilmed at Advantage Archives in Iowa. That microfilm was scanned at Potsdam and added to the previously posted issues.
Thirteen HSM supporters contributed more than $1,500 towards this phase of the CMN project. In 2024, the previously missing 1968 News will be added to the historic newspapers site. Nearly a complete run of that year’s paper was discovered this year in a local home whose owner donated them to HSM.
The hard-bound volumes of the News are housed at Fairview Public Library. The microfilm and digital versions are protected in the HSM Archives. FMI: mtownhistory.org.