Newspaper Archives
A collection of DeFuniak Herald and Breeze newspapers on 16 mm film is available for viewing at the Walton County Heritage Museum. The collection includes newspapers from 15 July 1909 through 14 March 1912, all of 1914 and 1915, and some papers from the 1990s.
Bound copies of both newspapers for the years 1910 through 1990 are available at the Clerk of Court’s office in the Walton County Courthouse in DeFuniak Springs. You may also want to check our other databases, Obituaries for Walton County and The Heritage Collection, for information about the people, places, and events of Walton County, Florida.
This database contains excerpts from some Breeze newspapers from April 1910 through November 1947 and excerpts from some DeFuniak Herald newspapers from February 1911 through August 1946. You can use the search tool to begin your exploration, or you may prefer to select a tag. To locate a name quickly within an entry, use the “Find” tool for your browser.
This archive also includes all known copies of The Lakewood Star, which provides a glimpse of life in the thriving lumber town of Lakewood in 1908 and 1909. The scans are copies of copies, so transcripts have been provided. Part of the humor of the Star is the frequent and probably intentional misspelling of words; e.g., “catarrh” and “catar” mean “guitar.” Tom McNeill, whose family owned Britton Lumber Company, has been generous with his contributions of the history of Lakewood, and we thank him for the copies of the Star.
Those who contributed articles to this database are noted when known, and we thank them for sharing their research. We especially thank Emily Petroskey and Sarah Capps for their hard work in posting many items to this database.
Grammar and punctuation errors have been allowed to stand. Words in brackets indicate spelling corrections have been made or, in a few cases, words that are unacceptable in today’s culture have been modified. Please keep in mind that we should not judge our ancestors by today’s standards.
If you have questions or want to contribute to these archives, please contact Diane Merkel.