SEYMOUR WEEKLY CRESSET, Seymour, Baylor County, Texas, June 9, 1887

• Very rare Southwestern publication

A very rare newspaper which is believed to have existed for ten years, from 1879 to 1889, however records are not clear. Gregory's "Union List of American Newspapers" notes that only the Bancroft Library had any holding of this title, and those were deaccessioned many years ago. This is one of the deaccessioned issues. No institutions still have any holdings of this newspaper.

Eight pages, a minor ink stain to the front page, never bound nor trimmed, very nice condition.

Background: This June 9, 1887 issue of the Seymour Weekly Cresset represents an exceptionally rare surviving document of late 19th-century West Texas frontier history. Published in Baylor County during a brief decade of operation (1879–1889), this eight-page weekly offers an invaluable snapshot of a frontier town navigating the pivotal shift from open-range cattle country along the Western Trail to an established agricultural community. Its historical scarcity is highlighted by Winifred Gregory’s Union List of American Newspapers, which identified the University of California’s Bancroft Library as the sole archive to ever hold copies—holdings that were deaccessioned decades ago, leaving virtually no known institutional copies intact. Beyond its value as an unrecorded local archive of early Seymourian business, legal notices, and regional gossip, the Cresset carries broader cultural significance, famously providing the Oxford English Dictionary with its earliest known documented usage of terms like "fingertip veil" from its syndicated content. These factors combine to make this surviving deaccessioned issue a unique artifact of North Texas heritage.