A four-foot high column of newspapers sits in the San Juan Bautista Historical Society’s Luck Museum.
The stack contains 51 years of the San Juan Mission News, the weekly newspaper published in San Juan Bautista beginning in the late 1800s.
Each year of the weekly publication is individually wrapped in brown paper. Each brown parcel is marked with its year of publication. The latest is 1969. The earliest is 1918.
Combined, the newspapers, wrapped and stacked in a corner of the Luck Museum, are a tapestry woven on a weekly basis by the townspeople of San Juan Bautista as they lived their lives individually and as a community during a major portion of the 20th Century. It is a colorful, intricate and delicate tapestry – which, fortunately, has been preserved for decades.
The collection is a gift to the San Juan Bautista Historical Society from Janet Lamb Wilson and Everett Wilson of San Jose. Janet is the daughter of Ed and Marj Lamb, the husband and wife team who published the newspaper from 1940 until it closed in 1969. The materials were stored for more than 40 years in a shop behind the Lamb residence on Second Street in San Juan Bautista. The property was sold after Marj Lamb’s death in 2012, requiring the Wilsons to relocate the materials. Feeling that the collection should remain a part of San Juan Bautista, they donated it to the Historical Society.
“It’s important that Ed and Marj Lamb be recognized for the contribution they made to this community over many years,” the Wilsons said. “The continued relevance of the newspaper is important to us.”
Printed on a weekly basis, the paper and the husband/wife team who published it “were considered the voice and conscience of San Juan Bautista,” according to many in the community.
Officially named the “Ed and Marj Lamb/Mission News Collection,” the gift represents one of the largest, most significant acquisitions in the history of the Historical Society.
Along with the 1918 through 1969 editions of the newspaper, the collection includes the newspaper’s photographic inventory and parts from the 1882 printing press once used for printing the weekly publication. A second partial collection of the paper, thought to be intended for the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, is also included.
The photographs were taken by Ed Lamb, who in addition to being the publisher of the local newspaper, was the judge at the local justice court and an accomplished photographer. The photographs include images of individual townspeople, iconic street scenes, community events and panoramas of the town as it developed over the middle of the 20th Century. Many are as noteworthy for their artistic value as for their historical value.
The Historical Society plans to open the 1918 editions of the newspaper during its fall Open House, scheduled for 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Oct. 12 at the Carl Martin Luck Museum on the corner of Third and Monterey Streets in San Juan Bautista. In addition to the newspaper collection, parts from the 1882 Cottrell printing press and digital images from the Mission News photographic collection will be exhibited.
For further information about the Ed and Marj Lamb/Mission News Collection or about the San Juan Bautista Historical Society’s upcoming Open House, call the Society at [email protected].
