Volunteers Needed For Digitization Project

By Editor | June 18, 2025 |

Grant Thompson displays the oldest known Water Valley newspaper, a July, 1869 edition of The South Eagle. The newspaper came from Bruce Gurner’s collection and is good condition.

DAVE’S WORLD
By David Howell

This summer will mark three years since Water Valley historian and alderman-elect Grant Thompson launched a project to digitize old editions of the Herald. When he started, his goal was to preserve 84 years of history recorded in the pages of the Herald – from 1930 to 2014. He has made considerable progress, taking a picture of every single newspaper page from 1930 to 1969. Grant comes to newspaper office two or three mornings each week and photographs several months of editions during each trip.

Grant is looking for a few volunteers to help speed up the project and he has made the process foolproof. He constructed a stand that holds a camera over a table with a black background. Using a camera allows him to take pictures of any sized document including a newspaper page. He also added two light bars to the setup to illuminate the pages. A volunteer would simply need to plug up the lights and start taking pictures of each newspaper page. Give him a call at (662) 473-7641 if you would like to help.

Grant transfers the images to a computer and converted into a text readable file for each edition – meaning there will be almost 4,500 files or editions before the project is completed. The vast majority of the old newspaper editions are in good shape, but some were damaged during the 1984 flood when water was up several feet in the old newspaper office at 500 Main Street. Grant’s work will ensure that all of the old newspapers will be protected for future generations. Copies of the digital editions will be stored at multiple places including the newspaper office and accessible to the public.

There are a lot of missing editions, especially prior to 1930 and a few gaps during the 1930s. It has been interesting as several times during this project people have reached out to Grant to share old Water Valley newspapers that came from an attic or a drawer.

The greatest find so far came last month when Joe Gurner reached out to Grant to report recently rediscovered Water Valley newspapers. The old papers were from Joe’s late father’s collection, Bruce Gurner, and to say Grant was ecstatic is an understatement. There were many newspapers from the 1920s, especially from 1925 to 1929. Grant shared that there are very few Water Valley newspapers remaining from this decade.

This is the amazing part of the story, the papers were found inside a shed that had roof damage. There were several soggy boxes, and Grant carefully pulled out the papers and placed them on the floor in a back room of the Herald office to dry. He has been able to carefully separate the pages after they dry. Many of the pages are in multiple pieces, and Grant pieces them together like a puzzle with tape. The end result is many editions are in surprisingly decent condition.

The find included other editions including the oldest known Water Valley newspaper, a July, 1869, edition of The Southern Eagle. The edition was wrapped in plastic and in good condition. This edition had been previously digitized and is available to view on the National Library of Congress’ Chronicling America project. The newspaper pages were extremely dark, and Grant took new pictures of each page that are much more legible.

I was searching through my archives last week looking for pictures of Mike Scroggins for his retirement reception and kept getting distracted. The distraction was tons of other pictures, many long forgotten, and it sparked an idea. I have added a “Do You Remember?” picture with plans to make it a weekly feature.

If any readers would like to contribute with a fun picture of something we may not readily remember, bring it by the office or email it to me at dhowl@bellsouth.net. I am going to try it for several months and see what kind of feedback we receive.

Posted in Archived Stories