After Google launched an ambitious project in 2008 to digitize many local newspapers, the giant e-content provider scanned about 2,000 publications, including a Wilmington newspaper, the Sunday Morning Star.
In the era when many dailies didn’t have Sunday editions, these periodicals functioned like newsweeklies, the broadsheet having a form distinct from the weekday news. They pulled together features and more in-depth, colorful pieces as reporters worked seven days to assemble stories for the Saturday afternoon deadline. It was this sought-after, far more leisurely reading on peaceful Sundays that made these publications unique.
Delaware’s only Sunday newspaper was first issued in 1881 by Jerome B. Bell. The second editor and publisher was Joseph H. Martin, who sold it to J. Edwin Carter in 1946. An agent for Alexis I. du Pont Bayard and Erwin M. Budner purchased the paper in 1949, and they became the controlling interest.
The broadsheets contained robust women’s sections, news in photographs (once technology advanced), advice for modern living, entertainment coverage, history pieces, and “The Delaware Magazine,” a weekly insert.
The last number of the 73-year-old paper rumbled off the press on April 18, 1954. It had revised its name and added new typefaces almost two years earlier to serve readers and advertisers better. But “The Star that had been such an important feature of Delaware Life since 1881 was out,” Morning News Columnist Bill Frank wrote. It is tough “to run a Sunday newspaper in Wilmington against the competition from out-of-town Sunday papers and their abundance of pages of comics.”
The Star – A Valuable Research Source
Bill Frank called the Wilmington Sunday Star a “fighting newspaper.” Often overlooked, it is a valuable source for genealogists and local history researchers. The coverage and perspective differ from what was covered in the city’s dailies.
Here are the links to the Sunday Morning Star on the Google archives, which provides free access.
Sunday Morning Star — 1881-1950
Wilmington Sunday Star — 1953-1954
