Northern Islander
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The Northern Islander was the official church organ of the Strangite Mormon church under James J. Strang on Beaver Island from 1850 to 1856.  A restored edition of this important paper was completed in November, 2003.  It includes the following issues:

  Watson Collection                                Additional Issues

Regular Issues:
  1  of the  1 issue of 1850
11 of the 12 issues of 1851                  
18 of the 26 issues of 1852                   Volume 2, No. 23, Sept. 23, 1852
  3 of the   4 issues of 1853                   Special issue, July 11, 1853
15 of the 19 issues of 1854
15 of the 16 issues of 1855                   Volume 5, No. 78, Sept. 13, 1855
  8 of the   8 issues of 1856

Daily Islander:
  3  issues                                             Volume 1, No. 5, May 1, 1856
                                                              Volume 1, No. 18, May 19, 1856

  The hard copy of this work is 303 pages, double column, ten point type, soft bound.  It includes selected doctrinal and historical articles of importance.  It also includes a subject index to the entire Islander.  Basic newspaper articles were not included.  The CD-ROM includes both a digital copy of the restored hard copy; and high resolution digital photographs of every page (JPEG format).  They can be opened with a picture program, enlarged as desired, and read from the original facsimile copy.

  The current price (Nov. 2003) of the hard copy is $20 plus $5 shipping.  As these are printed in small quantities the price is subject to small price changes.  The price of the CD-ROM is $10 plus $1 shipping.  If both the hard copy and CD-ROM are ordered, the total shipping charge is $5.  An order form is included at the bottom of the Mormon Books html.

“Let every family of the saints take the Herald, and let them preserve them neat and clean, and get them bound for their libraries. They will be hereafter a source and a fountain of in­telligence to the rising, as well as the present, generation. Breth­ren, let not this word to you be vain.”—Gospel Herald, 4.17.667.  The same instruction can be equally applied to the Northern Islander.

Dale L. Morgan, in his Bibliography of church documents, wrote, “Successor of a kind to the Gospel Herald, the Northern Islander was the first newspaper published in northern Michigan . In their salutatory Strang’s printers, Frank Cooper and Edward Chidester, declared that the paper was to be ‘the gazette of the Islands ; devoted to their interests; as well as a vehicle of general news, literature, science, and the arts. And issuing among a people exclusively saints (in derision called Mormons) it will of course strongly reflect their interests and feelings. Yet it is not intended as the official organ of the church, but a paper for general reading. The publishers will, nevertheless, as matters of news, keep their readers informed of every thing of interest, both relating to the Mormon colonies in this region, and all the various settlements commenced in the upper lake country.’ They also announced: ‘The Islander will be sent to the subscribers of the Gospel Herald, for the periods which they are severally entitled to that paper. We shall issue a periodical exclusively theological, as soon as we can obtain a supply of paper of the proper quality. We were disappointed in obtaining a supply before the close of navigation.’ It never did become possible to publish this ‘periodical exclusively theological,’ and the Islander served as the organ of the Church until the dispersion from Beaver Island .”