Sun Publications of Florida History

Abell, who had been born and raised in East Providence, R.I., worked as a shipping clerk before becoming an apprentice printer at the Providence Patriot in 1822.

They founded the Public Ledger in 1836 in Philadelphia, and a year later, Abell's partners agreed to back him when he proposed starting a penny paper in Baltimore, whose population at the time was 90,000.

Sun Media Group s origins date back to the May 20, 1847 publication of a weekly newspaper called the Lewiston Falls Journal.Doctor Alonzo Garcelon, later a governor of Maine, was one of the founders, along with William Waldron, a printer by trade.

Abell, also the largest holder of ground rents in Baltimore, had made substantial deposits in both Union and Southern banks, and by 1864 had bought out his original partners.

He lived to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Sun and was 81 when he died at his residence at Charles and Madison streets, in 1888.

20, 1893 that a new paper was born in Lewiston-Auburn, The Lewiston Daily Sun, founded by Henry Wing of Lewiston.

Henry Louis Mencken joined The Sun in 1906 as Sunday editor, beginning a nearly 50-year career as a columnist, correspondent and adviser to the A.S. Abell Co.

In 1926, Wood and Costello bought the Journal from the Dingley family and moved the operation from the Dingley Building on Lisbon Street to the Park Street location.

L.B. Costello s son, Russell H. Costello, joined the company as production manager in 1930.

In 1931, The Sun won the first of its 15 Pulitzer Prizes with and award to editorial cartoonist Edmund P. Duffy.

In 1939, the American Newspaper Guild won a representational election but a decade would pass before the Guild secured a contract with the company.

Russell H. Costello succeeded his father as president and publisher in 1959.

Advances in computer technology brought an end to the hot metal linotype, or lead process, era beginning in 1971 and the newspapers have experienced constant change since then to improve and quicken writing, editing and production processes.

In 1975, the first computers entered the newsroom, which meant a switch from traditional hot type printing method.

In October 1983, following an extensive study involving many employees, a new Sunday newspaper was born, called Sunday Sun Journal.

Times Mirror was acquired in 2000 by Tribune Co. of Chicago, making The Sun a part of a major-market, multimedia company whose operations in addition to newspapers includes television and radio broadcasting, and interactive media.

In 2016, Brower and Chris Harris, former president of Upper Valley Press in New Hampshire, purchased The Rutland Herald and Barre-Montpelier Times Argus in Vermont.