The Kingston Daily Freeman was originally published as the Rondout Daily Freeman, a neighborhood newspaper for the Village of Rondout, beginning in October of 1871. With the merger of the Villages of Rondout and Kingston to create the City of Kingston in 1872, the publication changed its name to the Kingston Freeman, experimenting with both daily and weekly publications for the rest of the 19th century. Under the guidance of owner Jay Klock, the newspaper became a major regional publication in the 1890s and endured one of the principal newspapers published in Ulster County throughout the 20th century, covering activities of the County Government and including coverage and stories from across the Mid-Hudson Valley.
In 2020, the offices of the newspaper were moved to smaller accommodations. This precipitated the disposition of the Freeman’s vast photo morgue, comprising images from the second half of the 20th century. The Ulster County Clerk’s Office interceded, accessioning the collection as part of the holdings of the County Archives to prevent the collection’s loss through disposition. Materials were boxed and moved first to an offsite facility before arriving in the County Records Center in 2022.
The Freeman photo morgue was originally organized using a file number system containing batches of disparate photos broadly pertaining to the same subject, group, event, or individual. A card catalog facilitated location of specific files, and images were often marked with the number relating to the file they were housed in. This system was used to inform further processing, and existing citations using the Freeman’s number system can be verified and retrieved on request to the County Archives. [Description supplemented by Kingston Daily Freeman and Hudson River Valley Heritage Historic Newspapers]
