Winona State University has published an online archive of four Winona newspapers. This archive includes available issues of the Winona Argus, the Winona Daily Republican, the Winona Republican Herald and the Winona Daily News from 1855 to 1976 and is an excellent resource for obituaries, wedding and birth announcements.
I’d highly recommend searching for regional history articles published by Percival Narveson; he endeavored to preserve fading memories and forgotten places through his frequent contributions to local newspapers. (An example: Landmarks Fall at Spring Grove.) A regular chronicle on mid 19th-century Spring Grove social happenings by Laura Rauk was something like the Facebook of its day – “Miss Laura Anderson was visiting in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Iver Johnson on Saturday afternoon.” According to the University:
The newspapers can be read page-by-page, issue-by-issue or searched by keyword. Please note, however, that due to the poor quality of the original, some pages are difficult to read and keyword searching may not find every occurrence of a word. Also, not all issues were available for digitization. For example, this project does not provide full coverage for the Winona Argus due to limited issue availability in the microfilm format.
