I was first introduced to the paperboy when I was in grad school researching the New York City Draft Riots of 1863. Paperboys, aligned with gangs like the Dead Rabbits and the Bowery Boys, were brawling in the streets while Horace Greeley was in hiding. The boys from the New York Herald tried to burn down the press office of Greeley’s New York Tribune. Often underestimated, the paperboys were tough orphaned street kids, as young as 6 years old. At a young age serving as lookouts for organized crime, they would learn how to pickpocket and perform other petty crimes. A life of day-to-day survival, some would rise into the ranks of these violent gangs. The plight of these young lads exposed the dark world of 19th and early 20th-century child labor and served as a major impetus for the first child labor laws. I discovered their stories paging through microfilm of the Times, Herald and Tribune. I remember performing the slow scroll as you glide the film from side to side hoping for a glimpse of a single word. All I could think is there must be a better way; and, what was I missing? A few years later, I would find myself as the manager of ProQuest Historical Newspapers. After typing just a few keywords into the Historical New York Times, I was peppered in seconds with countless more articles than I was able to discover over months of research hunched over that microfilm reader. From that point forward I focused my career on digitizing historical material and broadening the corpus of available material to ensure all voices are remembered. Paperboy Digital is a tribute to these underestimated scrappy street orphans.

- Bryan