Charles Dean Waldron (1856–1916) founded the Fairhaven Star in 1879 as a way to support himself and his family and to boost the town’s civic pride. He wrote the stories, solicited advertisements, and set the type. He took the finished printing forms across the bridge in a wheelbarrow to the offices of the New Bedford Mercury, where the four- page Star was printed. It was only three columns wide and 8½ inches long, and Waldron gave the thousand copies he had printed away free. By June he named the paper officially the Fairhaven Star, enlarged it to four columns, 10 inches, and began charging a penny per issue. And by the end of the year he was able to buy his own press.
The paper outgrew Waldron’s home at 13 Oxford Street, and in August 1880 he set up shop at 43 Center Street. Three years later he moved to the corner of Center and Main and in 1900 to the corner of Main and Ferry. In 1902, he moved next door, where the offices remained until the paper closed in 1967.
Charles’s son Henry worked for his father until he graduated from high school. After spending seven months on a Boston newspaper, he returned to become head of the Star’s news department. He enlarged the paper to eight pages in 1923, increased the use of photographs, and added syndicated columns and foreign and national news. In 1932 he retired and sold the paper to his employees. They sold stock to the public at $10 a share, and investors included Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lady Fairhaven. In 1936 they sold the paper to Harold Turner Watson, who also published the Dartmouth News, and in 1938 it was acquired by John B. DeGraw, who published the Star until 1966.
The Star is a wonderful source for local news and opinion. As Mabel Hoyle Knipe wrote in “Following ‘The Star,’” “letters motivated by avarice, political aspiration, sarcasm, patriotism, testiness, resentment and joy are spread all through the pages of THE STAR...and they provide an invaluable record of the thinking and the emotional convolutions of scores of Fairhavenites.”
The digital archive is made possible by the Community Preservation Act and the Millicent Library
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