Leading Citizens Founded the Daily News

Leading citizens of the community founded the Naugatuck Daily News in 1885 after deciding their growing community needed its own daily newspaper.

The newspaper has changed owners several times since it emerged during the Industrial Revolution which thrust captains of commerce and manufacturing into positions of prominence in Naugatuck.

The population of the borough at that time was 6,000 — just a fraction of the 30,625 residents counted during the most recent census in 1990. Another local newspaper already existed in the community, the Advocate, published by local job printer F.K. Perry.

However, after only nine years, the Advocate sold out to the Naugatuck Daily News, which then became the community’s only daily newspaper, as it is today. The News was incorporated formally by 80 investors in 1895, a decade after it began publication.

The attendance record of its first stockholders meeting on Oct. 9, 1895 reads like a Who’s Who of Naugatuck society. Included among the luminaries present were A.C. Tuttle, a member of the prominent Tuttle family that got its start in Naugatuck industry by manufacturing hoes and other farm implements.

Harris Whittemore, whose family had teamed up with the Tuttles in a foundry business, was another of the News’ original incorporators. The Whittemores’ fame and fortune are still evident throughout Naugatuck in the edifices that bear the Whittemore family name, such as the Whittemore Memorial Library and the John Howard Whittemore Memorial Bridge.

F.M. Twitchell was at the meeting. The Twitchell family grew to prominence in the early 1800s, first as manufacturers of umbrella fittings and safety pins in a former button factory at the mouth of Fulling Mill Brook. By the late 1800s, the Twitchells expanded the business into the Naugatuck Manufacturing Company where they made copper floats for the plumbing industry which was growing rapidly throughout the United States.

Also present was Charles E. Davis, whose fortune came from family grocery and meat markets, and William Kennedy, the owner of a flourishing dry-goods store. Arthur H. Dayton, another of the original stockholders, was a money man. He was the manager of the Naugatuck Savings Bank for a half century, beginning in 1885.

Another of the founders was Eli C. Barnum, who also represented tremendous financial interests as the manager of the fledgling Naugatuck Water Co. He served in the position from 1889 to 1918. The water company, when it was founded, tapped into a seven-million-gallon storage pond which made possible the installation of indoor plumbing, with bathtubs and toilets, throughout Naugatuck and neighboring Beacon Falls and the Platts Mills section of Waterbury.

Yet another founder was Patrick Conran, who is best remembered as a leader of the borough’s growing Roman Catholic population. Waves of immigrants in the late 1800s changed Naugatuck from its exclusively Yankee Puritan Protestant beginnings into a community of cultural, ethnic and religious diversity.

The earliest Catholics in Naugatuck celebrated Mass in Conran’s home. They later attended services in Richard’s Hall until a church was built on Water Street in 1867-68. St. Francis Church was finished in 1890.

J.F. Maher also took his place among the original stockholders. His family was the first of the Roman Catholics to settle in the community, when it was still known as Salem, in 1842.

Yet another of the newspaper’s original stockholders was William T. Rodenbach, a leading citizen of Naugatuck for many years, who served as a manager of the United States Rubber Company until the days of the First World War.

A board of directors was elected at that session. The five-member board included Thomas W. Ahern, Tuttle, Twitchell, Kennedy and Rodenbach.

Perhaps the most important of the incorporators who attended the first stockholders’ meeting, in terms of the newspaper’s history, was Ahern. Ahern left his job as Naugatuck postmaster to become the newspaper’s first publisher, from 1895 to 1927.

In fact, Ahern founded a dynasty of Daily News publishers who controlled the United States Rubber Company until the days of the First World War.

A board of directors was elected at that session. The five-member board included Thomas W. Ahern, Tuttle, Twitchell, Kennedy and Rodenbach.

Perhaps the most important of the incorporators who attended the first stockholders’ meeting, in terms of the newspaper’s history, was Ahern. Ahern left his job as Naugatuck postmaster to become the newspaper’s first publisher, from 1895 to 1927.

In fact, Ahern founded a dynasty of Daily News publishers who controlled the paper until the middle of this century. Ahern died in June 1927 and his son, Edward J. Ahern, became publisher, a position he held until 1942. He was editor from 1942 to 1943.

The Naugatuck Daily News published a special edition in 1935 to commemorate the borough’s 50th anniversary. The newspaper’s staff at the time included Edward J. Ahern, publisher, Charles J. Baxter, editor-in-chief, John J. Daly, city editor, Joseph F. Smith, advertising manager, Richard J. Kelley, circulation manager and Kenneth Rapieff, sports editor.

The Daily News tried changing with the times as radio became a popular mass medium. The newspaper sponsored a daily radio newscast from the Gem Theater in the old Town Hall.

But the long-lasting effects of the Great Depression had a serious impact on the newspaper’s finances. The trouble caught up with management in the early 1940s.

On Feb. 2, 1942, the News went bankrupt and was sold at public auction. The high-bidder, whose offer topped a Whittemore family bid, was Rudolph M. Hennick, who then started his own publishing dynasty.

Hennick paid $20,200 for the Naugatuck Daily News. Hennick was a young man who cut his teeth in the newspaper business working for various papers in nearby Waterbury.

He was criticized at the time for being an out-of-towner, but he and his family sunk their roots into Naugatuck and continued the previous local owners’ tradition of community service.

Hennick’s son Frederick joined the Daily News in 1950 and succeeded his father as publisher when the old man retired in 1964.

The Hennicks remained in charge until the Daily News was purchased in more recent days by American Publishing.

Source: Special Edition of the Naugatuck Daily News (1844 - Naugatuck Sesquicentennial - 1944)