Red Dirt Diaries: OKC Woman Tries To Find Home For 200-Year-Old Newspapers

An Oklahoma City woman is trying to unravel a mystery that goes back more than 200 years.

"This blew me away, this is a dream," Jennifer Jones said.

Jones acquired five leather-bound books of newspapers from various Pennsylvania dating back to the early 1800s.

"History is everything. We have to learn from it. We have to keep it sacred," Jones said.

Jones acquired the newspapers when her uncle died suddenly in 2020.

She now wants to learn why her uncle held on to the articles.

"I imagine he wanted the newspapers so we could look up possible ancestors," Jones said.

With the help of a museum in Pennsylvania, Jones gathered that the newspapers were collected by Pennsylvania Canal Commissioner James Clark who is written about in several articles.

The connection to Clark is still unclear, but what Jones wants to do now is black and white.

"I think he (my uncle) would appreciate finding a home," Jones said.

She is trying to donate her uncle's newspapers to a museum.

"No one seems to be all that interested," Jones said.

In fact, Jones has been rejected about a dozen times in her attempts to find the newspapers a permanent home so far.

Even the museum in Pennsylvania which helped Jones better understand the newspapers only gave her advice on how to store the newspapers at her home.

So Jones keeps holding on to the centuries-old link to her late uncle.

"This is a dream," Jones said as she goes through the pages.