This page provides some original datasets that I have collected in my past work. I hope they would be helpful for more people, and you are welcome to use them. Please kindly cite the original work if you use them.
Telegraph network in the US, 1844-1852:
This link provides the data and shapefiles for telegraph lines and stations in the US during 1844-1850 and in 1852. The data allow one to track the growth of the US telegraph network from its inception in 1844 to 1852, when the network has spanned the nation. More details on these data and data sources can be found in my paper "The Electric Telegraph, News Coverage and Political Participation" (Journal of Economic History, 2025).
This dataset provides a directory of US newspapers in 1850, including their title, location (state, county, and township), publishing frequency, party affiliation, and circulation. I digitized these data from the Catalogue of the Newspapers and Periodicals Published in the United States (Kennedy, 1852), which was compiled from the 1850 Census of Social Statistics and lists all the newspapers in the US in 1850. Images of the raw data are also in the same folder (taken in the rare book section of the New York Public Library). The data were used in my paper "The Electric Telegraph, News Coverage and Political Participation" (Journal of Economic History, 2025).