QUEENS COUNTY – The Queens County Advance has been a part of the community for 139 years, and what Linda Rafuse, director of the Queens County Museum, remembers about going into the office at 271 Main St. is the sound of all the machines.
SaltWire Network, the owner of The Advance, recently announced the community newspaper would merge with the South Shore Breaker. This is the last edition of the Advance.
“There’s always been a weekly paper here for the last 150 years or more,” said Rafuse. “We’ve been really lucky that the editors that have been in any of those newspapers have always been passionate about history.”
A passion for history meant the Queens County Historical Society received many early newspapers from past editors.
Rafuse says it’s important for the museum to have old newspapers because it’s a documentation of history.
“Our mandate is to preserve that history and to collect it,” she said.
One of the things that’s special about The Advance, explains Rafuse, is that, especially in the 1930s, there were a number of historical pieces in the paper. She says there were pieces about all the communities in the county. The stories would run weekly.
