Frequently Asked Questions
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100 Years Ago
No, we do not make up the stories in the papers’ popular ‘Latest From the Last Century’ columns: whenever people went to town, they apparently dropped by the local newspaper offices and “told all” that happened in their neighborhoods. If someone’s wife sneezed so hard she dislocated her jaw, well, it was news!
(Imagine what would happen if we could publish all the painful mishaps and snake sightings and fender benders that go on today: our circulation would triple— but we’d probably be sued on a weekly basis. Oh, well.)
These columns are taken word-for-word (though some words are left out; the style 100 years ago was a good deal more verbose) from The Valley Register and The Brunswick Herald, which the editor reads from microfilm copies that you, too, are welcome to read. They are housed at The Lamar Center on West Main Street in Middletown; call the Center at 301-371-7090 to arrange to view them.
The Register files are complete, running from the 1860s to 1991; when the long-running, hot-lead-type paper closed in 1991, the microfilm and microfilm reader were donated by the Rhoderick family to The Middletown Valley Historical Society. MVHS has loaned the film to the Lamar Center. (C. Burr Artz Library in Frederick also has microfilm copies of most of The Register volumes.)
The Herald files are also complete, running from the paper’s founding in 1891 through 1911.
Microfilm copies of both papers can purchased from the Maryland Archives.
NOTE: The more familiar newspaper to long-time Brunswick residents is The Blade-Times, published from circa 1914 to 1970. In later years, it was bought out by the Loudoun Times-Mirror, so the archives are currently housed in that paper’s Leesburg offices. We understand if you call a day ahead, you can arrange to see these archives.
Back issues.
Yes, we’ve got them— for all but a couple of issues. They’re kept at our office in Brunswick. Extra copies of recent issues (say, the last two months) are still priced at 35¢ each plus tax. For older copies we have to root into the storeroom, which adds a $1 search fee.
Photographs.
We’ve got those, too. If we took the photograph, you are welcome to the print of it: first come, first served. (Most likely it will be the size as you saw it in the paper.) If the original print is gone or you’d like a more carefully made enlargement, 5x7 reprints are available for $3 and 8x10s for $5.
These days, maybe 20 percent of the pictures in the paper are loaned to us by readers, so we can’t reproduce them. Look for the photo credit: if it says “— Citizen / Donna Lear”, for example (or — Citizen / any name), then we have a negative we can make an enlargement from.
We keep our negatives— all of them. In the case of the Brunswick paper, we have 29 years’ worth of history on file!
WARNING: In recent months, we have been running more and more pictures taken in digital format. Due to the size of the digital files, we cannot hold them on the computer for long. If you want a reprint of a digital picture, call within a week of its appearance in the paper, or it will have dissolved into pixels and floated away...