Newspapers and elections: Morristown library talk previews Acorn Hall exhibit

Historian Pete Tamburro with the most historic election headline, at the Morristown & Township Library. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
Historian Pete Tamburro with the most historic election headline, at the Morristown & Township Library. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
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Historian Pete Tamburro with the most historic election headline, at the Morristown & Township Library. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
Historian Pete Tamburro with the most historic election headline, at the Morristown & Township Library. Photo by Kevin Coughlin

Newspapers are fast becoming collector’s items.

But Pete Tamburro started collecting them long before they were an endangered species.

Election tie of historian Pete Tamburro. Photo by Kevin Coughlin
Election tie of historian Pete Tamburro. Photo by Kevin Coughlin

“You can learn more about America from reading newspapers than you can ever learn from reading text books,” the retired history teacher said on Thursday at the Morristown & Township Library, where he showed off favorite front pages from decades of elections.

Tamburro gave a preview of an Acorn Hall  exhibit coming in November.

His copy of the famed “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline is a sure crowd-pleaser.  Yet countless serendipitous discoveries are what keep him burrowing through dog-eared newsprint.

Discoveries like the story of an 80-year-old Daniel Boone taking a companion on hunting forays… just so someone could bring back his body if he died in the woods.

Or the discovery that the real Boone, unlike TV’s Fess Parker, stood only 5-foot-7.

Tamburro, a board member of the Morris County Historical Society, said his high school students always enjoyed perusing old newspaper ads. And they appreciated the chance to “smell the 19th century.”

Science fiction, it seems, has nothing on the newspaper.

“It’s a time-travel machine,” Tamburro said.

2 COMMENTS

  1. Looking forward to the upcoming exhibit at Macculloch Hall. Pete Tamburro is right. Newspapers and their stories are real history. I also have learned more reading the collections at the Local History Dept. at the Library than I have from the history books.

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