The Way We Were: Newspapers had a long bumpy road until finding an audience under longtime owners David Givler and Harold White

Every week we publish a historic photo highlighting a story from Naperville’s past from the history archives of Naper Settlement.

The Naperville Sun you’re reading today is just one in a long line of newspapers that have served the community since 1849.

For much of the 19th century, the business was quite volatile with newspapers coming and going, some after a few months, others after a few years.

Naperville’s newspaper history began when Charles J. Sellon took up an offer from a Chicago businessman to start a publication in the city in exchange for a free printing press.

The first issue of Sellon’s DuPage County Recorder was published Dec. 1, 1849. It had a circulation of 500 — a big number for the time — but folded in just nine months.

Sellon was undeterred, returning in August 1850 with the Democratic Plaindealer. As was the case for many newpapers at the time, it promoted the issues it supported — in this case, the Democratic Party and the Daughters of Temperance.

Despite taking on a partner, journeyman printer H.S. Humphrey, to help address financial problems, Sellon ultimately abandoned the enterprise — and his family — without warning in November 1850.

After Sellon’s sudden exit, Dr. C.C. Barnes and Charles Keith assumed his debts and went into partnership with Humphrey. The DuPage County Observer began publishing in January 1851.

Humphrey sold his interest to Gershom Martin in April 1852, and he worked with Barnes and Keith for the two years before assuming sole ownership.

But then, like now, readership was important. With fewer than 275 subscribers, the Observer was having a tough go and printed its final edition in 1854.

Folk, however, still needed their news, and Keith returned to the business with the DuPage County Journal. Unlike its predecessors, the Journal included national and international news obtained through publisher’s exchanges, similar to The Associated Press or Reuters today.

Keith soon partnered with J.N. Edson under the name Keith, Edson & Co. And when Keith left, E.M. Day took his place and ultimately became the sole owner and editor in 1856.

All went well until 1857, when the newspaper’s office on West Chicago Avenue was swept away during a massive DuPage River flood.

However, a new paper soon popped up. The Naperville Newsletter was published from 1857 to 1863 and unlike its predecessors, it had some competition covering the growing community

The Naperville Sentinel was published from 1861 to 1862 by D.B. Birdsall, of Wheaton. It was succeeded in August 1863 by Robert K. Porter’s DuPage County Press, which lasted five years.

David B. Givler bought the Sentinel, and its growing list of 300 subscribers, in February 1968 and renamed it the Naperville Clarion in 1869.

The name change was necessitated by a change in the DuPage County seat, Naperville having lost the title to nearby Wheaton.

Newspapers in small towns were typically about four pages long and published once a week. A one-year subscription cost $2.

Because Givler could not make a living just publishing the Clarion, he also printed calling cards, invitations, stationary, handbills, posters and advertisements.

Ohio born and raised in Copenhagen Corners, which is now part of Naperville, Givler was the Copenhagen Schoolhouse schoolmaster and later trained as a printer prior to the Civil War.

After serving with the 7th Illinois Infantry, he returned home to farm and then worked as a warehouse clerk before going into the newspaper business, where he found success.

Helming the paper until 1905, he sold the venture to his son, Rollo N. Givler, who ran the enterprise until his retirement in 1951, when the Clarion was sold. It continued to be published until the 1970s.

Which brings us to the Naperville Sun, founded by Harold Moser in 1935 to compete with the Clarion. He sold it to Harold White a year later for the king’s ransom of $600.

Born in 1913 to parents teaching English in India at the time, White and his family moved to Naperville at age 4 when his father was offered chairmanship of the English department at North-Western College, renamed North Central College in 1926.

White graduated from NCC in 1935, bought the paper in 1936 and married Eva Anderson, whom he’d met at the school when she was studying for a teaching certificate, in 1937. Eva joined its the paper in 1938 and served as co-publisher until her death in 1990.

Harold White was the Sun’s editor and publisher until March 1991, when he sold it to Copley Press. They sold it and its other suburban newspapers in 2000 to the Sun-Times Media Group, which in turn sold it to current owner, Chicago Tribune Media Group, in 2014.

Andrea Field is the curator of history at Naper Settlement. For more information, go to www.NaperSettlement.org.

Steve Metsch is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.