Arunah Shepherdson Abell was an American publisher, journalist and philanthropist. He was the Founder of "The Sun" of Baltimore and the "Philadelphia Public Ledger".
Background
Arunah Shepherdson Abell was born on August 10, 1806 at East Providence, Rhode Island, United States. He was descended from Robert Abell, who came from England about 1630 to Rehoboth, now Seekonk, Massachussets. His father, Caleb, a quartermaster in the War of 1812, married Elona, daughter of Arunah Shepardson.
Education
Abell left school at the age of 14, being later apprenticed by his father to the Providence Patriot.
Career
At fourteen Abell worked for two years in the store of a dealer in West India goods. He wanted, however, to be a printer, and in October 1822 was apprenticed to the Providence Patriot. After attaining his majority he worked as a journeyman and foreman in Boston. Later in New York he worked in the same office with William M. Swain and Azariah H. Simmons. The New York Sun, started as a one-cent paper in 1833, had set a new fashion in journalism. The three printers determined to found another "penny paper. " Abell persuaded his associates that the New York field was occupied and that they should try Philadelphia, where all the newspapers sold for six cents. There they started the Public Ledger, which first appeared on March 24, 1836. It consisted of four pages, fifteen-and-a-half by twenty-one-and-a-half inches, with meager general news and little local news, except police reports, but it furnished reading for artisans and in a year was paying dividends.
Abell then proposed to start a similar paper in Baltimore, and his partners agreed on condition that he manage it. Accordingly on May 17, 1837, he issued the first number of the Baltimore Sun, of which he was to be the guiding spirit for the rest of his life, while the Philadelphia paper was chiefly managed by his partners, and after the death of Simmons, in 1855, by Swain alone. With the Sun Abell made a departure. Avoiding the trivial and personal note of many of the early penny papers, he created a condensed but accurate and comprehensive journal, editorially independent without neutrality, free from religious or partisan political controversy, and never intemperate, vituperative, or wantonly disregardful of individual privacy. His paper always maintained sound business methods. When the managers of a fair for Southern relief after the Civil War objected to an advertising bill of $1, 800, he insisted on payment, but then gave the money to the fund on condition of secrecy while he lived. He was a pioneer of modern impersonal journalism, and a pioneer in classification, in the systematic gathering of local news, and in the development of speedy general news service.
In 1838 he brought the President's message by pony express from Washington a day in advance of his neighbors, who depended on copying it from the Washington papers. He repeated this exploit with President Harrison's inaugural address, issuing it the day of delivery. He established a pony express from Boston for foreign news; and when the Oregon question became acute, he organized with New York papers a special service from Halifax, covering the distance in less than sixty-three hours. His enterprise in the Mexican War increased the prestige of the Sun. He brought dispatches by a relay of riders from New Orleans in sixty hours, outstripping the mail by thirty hours, and frequently giving the government its first news of important movements, among them the fall of Vera Cruz. He scrupulously safeguarded his advance news from speculative use, instantly giving its substance to the government and the public. In 1847 he established a daily pony express from New Orleans, and he also used carrier pigeons for short distances, keeping between four and five hundred birds on Hampstead Hill.
He assisted Samuel F. B. Morse in introducing the telegraph, and used it freely from the first. The President's message of May 11, 1846 on the Mexican War was telegraphed to the Sun and printed the next morning. His firm also invested in the enterprise of extending the subsidized Washington-Baltimore wire to Philadelphia. It was also eager for improvements in printing, and bought Hoe's first type-revolving cylinder press for the Public Ledger in 1846, and installed one in the Sun in 1853.
In the Civil War Abell had Southern sympathies. He printed the news and maintained editorial silence, but the Sun was watched by the authorities, and once an order to close it and arrest Abell was issued only to be withdrawn. He believed this attempt was incited by politicians, who presently offered to buy the paper on the plea of his precarious position. Increasing costs of publication caused disagreement in the firm. Since Swain was unwilling to increase the price of the Public Ledger, it was sold in 1864 to George W. Childs and Joseph W. and Anthony J. Drexel. The partners retained the Sun, with Abell in charge, and he raised the price to two cents. After the war he supported President Johnson's reconstruction policy and led in restoring the Democrats to power in Maryland, though he kept the Sun independent of the party organization.
On the death of Swain, February 16, 1868, Abell purchased his Baltimore interests and continued as sole proprietor of the Sun until its fiftieth anniversary, when he took into partnership his three sons, who inherited the paper by his will. His three sons and their grandsons retained control of the newspaper until 1910. As a result of a financial restructuring of the former Abell-Swain-Simmons partnership into a reorganized A. S. Abell Company, the newspaper was sold from family control. Also sold was the participating Safe Deposit bank and trust company which they had owned for those three decades.
He died in Baltimore on April 19, 1888.
Achievements
Personality
Abell was impressive in appearance, genial in disposition, and quietly masterful in execution.
Connections
In 1838 Abell married Mary, the daughter of John Fox of Baltimore. His wife died in 1859, leaving three sons and five daughters.