Bridgeport Evening Farmer

The Bridgeport Evening Farmer's earliest predecessor, the Danbury-based Farmers Journal, began publication in March 1790.[1] The newspaper underwent a series of name changes in the following years, becoming the Farmers Chronicle in 1793, and the Republican Journal in 1796.[1] The paper would revert to its original name in 1800, but would briefly become the Farmer's Journal and Columbian Ark for a few months in 1803.[1]

In the early 1800s, Connecticut remained a strong Federalist stronghold, but under the leadership of editor Stiles Nicholas the newspaper was staunchly Democratic.[1] Nicholas was fined and jailed in 1807 when defending the editor of another pro-Democrat paper from accusations of libel.[1] Nicholas would move the paper, now called the Republican Farmer, from Danbury to Bridgeport in 1810.[1] Over the following decades, and communication technology and printing rapidly improved, the paper published longer issues.[1]

In 1837, Stiles Nicholas' son, Roswell Nicholas, took over as the Republican Farmer's editor, and took over the paper's management three years later.[1]

Sometime in the mid-1850s, a man named William S. Pomeroy began a newspaper known as the Daily Farmer, partnering with a Yale-educated southerner named Nathan Stephen Morse.[1] The Daily Farmer regularly published content highly critical of Abraham Lincoln, in defense of slavery, and, even during the Civil War, supportive of peace with the Confederacy.[1] On August 24, 1861, a pro-union mob led by soldiers attacked the Farmer’s offices, and Pomeroy and Morse both fled the scene.[1] After the Civil War, journalist James B. Gould and printer Henry B. Stiles took over the publication of the long-lived weekly Republican Farmer and the Daily Farmer, the latter of which was now called the Evening Farmer, and in 1866, was renamed to the Bridgeport Evening Farmer.[1]

An advertisement for the silent film To The Death in the September 6, 1917, edition of the Bridgeport Evening Farmer

Stiles Nicholas' son-in-law Floyd Tucker took over the position as editor of the Bridgeport Evening Farmer, and continued the paper's militant Democratic alignment.[1] Under Tucker's management, the paper engaged in acrimonious disputes with other papers, and actively supported Democratic candidates in the area.[1] Bridgeport mayor Denis Mulvihill credited the paper with securing his re-election in 1903.[1] The Bridgeport Evening Farmer also frequently supported the causes of organized labor, regularly calling for better wages and shorter working hours.[1] In 1915, when workers went on strike in Bridgeport for an eight-hour work day, the paper publicly supported them.[1] However, upon the United States' entry into World War I, the paper called upon the city's unions to limit strike actions.[1]

From 1917 to 1927, the newspaper underwent a series of name changes, finally settling on the Bridgeport Times-Star following a merger in 1926.[1]

Following the 1926 merger, James L. McGovern became the editor of the paper.[1] His editorial style was noted as a stark departure of Tucker's partisan management, and proclaimed that the Bridgeport Times-Star would be an "independent newspaper" which conformed to the "modern standards of journalism".[1] This new style attracted a degree of success, and the Bridgeport Times-Star boasted circulation of 22,000 and a readership of 100,000 by November 1930, beating out the city's other large paper, the Bridgeport Post (now the Connecticut Post).[1]

During the Great Depression, the newspaper experience financial hardship, and was unable to pay dividends to its shareholders.[1] In 1941, the Bridgeport Post bought out the Bridgeport Times-Star for $200,000, and destroyed their equipment, ending daily newspaper competition in the city.[2] The Bridgeport Times-Star published its last issue on November 25, 1941.[1]