Open House event to showcase local history.

On Wednesday, July 1 from noon to 3 p.m. the Local History Collection Open House will feature selections from the original Daily Leader newspaper.

“We are celebrating America 250 this summer at the library. We thought the week of July 4th would be a good time to highlight our local history and genealogy sources,” Library Program Director Noreen McBride said. “This program is also a perfect way to showcase that we have copies of the original Daily Leader newspapers available at the library for research.”

The newspapers were donated to the library by the Lisbon Morning Journal and are already being used by visitors to the library.

The announcement of the East Palestine Daily Leader merger into the Morning Journal that was published Aug. 4, 1980. (Submitted photo)

McBride said that just last week a patron requested an obituary and they were able to find it in one of the newly acquired Daily Leaders.

Library Director Tamra Hess said that according to the Polk City Directories the history of the local newspaper began at 78 N. Market St., where it operated until the Morning Journal took over in the mid-1980s. The Journal kept that location for a while and then at some point, between 1983 and 1985, the East Palestine Morning Journal office moved to 71 N. Market St, where it remained until it closed sometime around 2003.

“I began working at the East Palestine Library in 1993 and once the library purchased a digital camera, library staff were permitted to visit the East Palestine Morning Journal Office and take digital photographs of articles in the bound volumes of the original newspapers,” Hess recalled.

When the East Palestine Morning Journal office closed in the early 2000s the bound Daily Leader volumes were moved to the Morning Journal office in Lisbon and placed in storage, where access was no longer available, she added.

“In January of 2025, I received a telephone call from Dan Schlueter, owner of Sewer and Drain Medic. He stated that he had been working in the basement of the Morning Journal building in Lisbon and saw the bound volumes of the East Palestine Daily Leader. He asked Morning Journal publisher, Tammie McIntosh, what she planned to do with them,” Hess said.

She recalled that Schlueter asked McIntosh if they could be given to the East Palestine Library, since the Journal was in the process of cleaning out the basement.

McIntosh gave her approval, and so Hess said that on a cold day in March of 2025 she and McBride drove two hatchbacks to Lisbon and with some help loaded up 111 bound volumes of old newspapers and drove them home to East Palestine.

The volumes were between the years of 1926 and 1980.

“We drove them home but Dan Schlueter and Tammie McIntosh made it possible,” Hess said.

In addition to the newspapers, Open House visitors are also encouraged to browse the library’s local history and genealogy collection.

A staff member will be available for assistance.

“East Palestine celebrated its sesquicentennial in 2025, and the library created a list of 150 facts about East Palestine along with a timeline. We have the timeline on display this summer, along with copies of the 150 facts available. We want to encourage visitors to learn about East Palestine and their family’s story in America 250,” McBride said.

The library is located at 309 N. Market St.