Date: 1864

 

Description: This document served as a written legal agreement to start and publish a newspaper here in Sioux City. The signed names below are the names of the men involved in this agreement and how much financial backing each was to provide for the project. Some of these dollar amounts have been crossed out, probably to show when each benefactor paid their dues. The name of the newspaper that was eventually established is not provided, but given the written date, 1864, it was probably the Sioux City Journal. The Journal is famous as the city’s premier newspaper today, but it was by no means the first paper in the area. Seth W. Swigget, who had edited several successful papers in Des Moines and Cincinnati, started the Sioux City Eagle on July 4, 1857. The Eagle was the first paper to promote Sioux City interests. Swigget tried to start to other papers that were never successful, and eventually the Eagle was consolidated with the Sioux City Register in 1859. The Journal was published independently of Swigget’s papers, and largely promoted the interests of the Republican Party. It ran in competition with the Sioux City Eagle, a pro-Democratic paper, until the Journal purchased its competitor in the 1940s. The Journal published both papers, the Journal as a morning paper and the Eagle as an evening paper, for 30 years after which the Eagle was discontinued.

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*See the Create and Innovate Collection for more history on the Sioux City Journal