The Western Star | Warren County Genealogical Society

Alleen Stephenson Digital Newspaper Project

Since the fall of 2018, the Alleen Stephenson Digital Newspaper Project has provided FREE online public access to digital images of The Western Star and other area newspapers on the Ohio Memory Project. These digital images were created from original copies of the newspaper located at the Ohio History Center in Columbus and from microfilm provided by the Warren County Historical Society and Warren County Genealogical Society.

The Alleen Stephenson Digital Newspaper Project is sponsored and maintained by the Warren County Genealogical Society. Using digitization and OCR technology, it provides FREE public access to 178,510 pages in 9,909 issues of this historical newspaper. There are some issues missing, but the entire collection on hand is browsable and searchable by titles, names, or dates.

The Western Star (Lebanon, Ohio)

Published for 206 years from 1807 to 2013, The Western Star is Ohio's oldest weekly newspaper. This newspaper reported the local news and activities of the citizens of Lebanon, Warren County, and nearby areas. The first publisher was John McLean (1785-1861), who was an American attorney, a political activist who served in the United States Congress, and a justice of the Ohio and the U.S. Supreme Courts. He started his legal career in Cincinnati and moved to Lebanon, Ohio, to open a law practice and dedicate his time to opening and running a weekly newspaper.

Other area newspaper titles found in this digitized collection include:

The Western Star & Lebanon Gazette (Lebanon, Ohio);

The Star & Gazette (Lebanon, Ohio);

The Weekly Western Star (Lebanon, Ohio);

The Lebanon Daily Star (Lebanon, Ohio);

The Western Star and the Lebanon Patriot (Lebanon, Ohio);

The Star Free Press (Springboro, Ohio) Jan 1986-Dec 1988;

The Franklin Chronicle (Franklin, Ohio) Jan 1987-Dec 1987.

The online collection can be found by visiting:

https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p16007coll84

About Alleen

This project is dedicated to the remarkable Alleen Stephenson (shown right), and was made possible through the generosity of Alleen's son and daughter-in-law, J. Todd and Rebecca Stephenson. For more than 60 years, Alleen wrote a much-loved column about the Kings Mills community that celebrated and preserved many aspects of the County's history.

The Western Star ONLINE! (click here)

Support the Star! August 2026 Update

You did it! We are thrilled to report that all issues in production with the Ohio Historical Society have been digitized and are now online. This has been a monumental project we have undertaken with them to get our beloved Western Star newspaper online for all to access at the Ohio Memory Project.

Thank you to everyone who has supported and continues to support this project by donating time, money, and missing issues! It is a rare day when we don't either use The Western Star online for our research or hear from others who have used it and appreciate having access.

While we gear up for the next step of adding missing issues, there are TWO ways you can still help.

(1) LOCATE MISSING ISSUES!

Using the button below, you can access a list that includes the missing issues of The Western Star (and associated newspapers) we are trying to locate. Some dates and days of the week provided are a best guess, as the day of the week it was published changed over time. We are actively seeking donations or loans of hard copies or microfilm to help us digitize as many issues as we can.

*We are extremely interested in locating early issues (1807-1821) and hope to track down the final four issues published in December 2012 and January 2013. While sad that it was the end of its run, it would be great to include those final issues in our online project.*

(2) PLEASE DONATE!

Help us add the missing issues to this digitization project. Through your help, we have covered the costs to this point, but still have more to do! All donations to our fundraising campaign will be used to help us digitize and add missing issues online as they are located.

Donate online below or you can mail a check to:

Support the Star!

Warren County Genealogical Society

406 Justice Drive

Lebanon, OH 45036

Western Star Issue List

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Support the Star!

August 2024 Update

We discovered GenealogyBank.com has 149 issues of the Western Star and even one issue of the Farmer online! GenealogyBank.com is a paid subscription site, and while not free like Ohio Memory, it is still great to know these issues are available.

You can search for these newspapers on GenealogyBank.com which will also bring up obituaries (but not entire pages) from 4 Jan 2006 - 14 Jul 2012. Once you are logged in, select "Browse Newspapers by State" from the top menu bar and enter "Lebanon" in the Filter by City box. Your search will bring up what they have available:

We have compiled a PDF (see button below) with links to each issue they have online to make searching for a particular date easier. When using these links, please note that the newspaper pages are large files and the pages load slowly.

If you need help accessing these issues, please contact us at 513-695-1144 or visit the WCGS Resource Library at 406 Justice Drive in Lebanon.

GenealogyBank Lebanon Search Results.png

Western Star Issues on GenealogyBank.com

Piles of Newspapers Donated!

Many thanks to Joey Hansted of the Little Miami History Connection for delivering piles of donated copies of the Western Star! We are working to inventory the issues and hopefully match them to our Missing Issues list. WooHoo!