This collection contains the Saturday Evening Mail, Terre Haute Daily News, and Locomotive Firemen's Magazine articles written by Ida Husted Harper. It represents Harper's Terre Haute years and the beginning of her career as a journalist and suffragist.

Although Harper lived in Terre Haute from 1871 to 1890, she continued to contribute to the Locomotive Firemen's Magazine (which was based in Terre Haute and edited by Eugene V. Debs) until 1894. A prolific writer, Harper published regular columns in the Saturday Evening Mail ("A Woman's Opinions") and the Locomotive Firemen's Magazine ("Woman's Depart-ment"). As managing editor of the Daily News, she wrote short pieces for the editorial page. Included in this collection are the first seventeen articles Harper wrote under the pseudonym "Mrs. John Smith."

Much of this collection was generated from the microfilmed newspapers at the Vigo County Public Library. A comprehensive search was conducted in the Saturday Evening Mail and the Daily News and all Harper articles were photocopied from these sources. (The library has a few gaps in its holdings. Missing issues of the Saturday Evening Mail and the Daily News may have contained Harper articles, but no known copies of these issues exist today. A list of missing issues is included in the inventory folder.) The Eugene V. Debs Foundation graciously loaned original copies of the Locomotive Firemen's Magazine for photocopying.

The project to collect, date, and index the Harper articles was funded by an Indiana Heritage Research Grant with the support of the Vigo County Public Library. The collection is organized in chronological order by publication.

Note: For a detailed, chronological list of Harper's writings, ask Archives staff.