R.P. Sponenbarger and his partner had started The Evening Herald, the first daily newspaper in Manatee County. The Evening Herald was the parent of the Bradenton Herald, which will mark it's 85th year in publishing in September.
When The Evening Herald debuted Sept. 15, 1922 in Manatee County, it cost a nickel.
At that time cars were a rarity on the streets of Bradentown, and there were acres and acres of uncluttered vistas throughout the county.
And historians have long told the tale of shipping live alligators through the mail in the 1920s. Oh, there was a catch: the gators had to be under 20 inches.
There was no catch with The Evening Herald, except a goal set forth by its co-founder and publisher, Raymond P. Sponenbarger.
Sponenbarger and his partner, Robert W. Bentley, set the sights high for the fledgling newspaper, emphasizing in the paper's first editorial that "The Evening Herald has not been brought into being as the result of an impulse."
"It is not a child of chance, but is born in the belief that Bradentown, the city of its publication, and the other cities and towns of this section have grown to a point where there is a demand - and a field - for a daily newspaper."
Another daily newspaper would start up a few years later in Sarasota. The first edition of the Sarasota Herald came out Oct. 4, 1925 (it became the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in 1938).
Some humble insights were added to that first Evening Herald editorial, allowing that while "The Herald does not pretend to be a great metropolitan newspaper . . . (the) publishers expect to see it grow from its small beginnings into a publication" that will aid in the building of "a greater town and countryside."
Sponenbarger had arrived several years earlier with his family. In 1917, he had a bought a half interest with W.C. Lightfoot in the Bradentown Herald Weekly, and moved with his wife, Lillian, and their daughter, Elizabeth, to Bradentown (as it was known in those days).
The weekly merged with The Manatee River Journal in 1922 to become The Evening Herald. The Herald-Journal Building was at No. 414 Pine Street; the phone number, 28. In later years, after Pine Street was renamed, its address was 401 13th St. W.
The company also published a semi-weekly newspaper, the Bradenton Herald-Journal.
Sponenbarger was president, Bentley was secretary-treasurer and E.P. Green, for whom the Green Bridge is named, was vice president. Sponenbarger and Bentley also served as editors and managers of the daily paper.
In 1925, Sponenbarger sold the newspaper to the Page Corporation. A few months later, the new owner, the Page Corp., dropped the Saturday paper in favor of a Sunday edition and the paper's name was changed to The Bradenton Herald.
From the modest beginnings of The Evening Herald, with just a few employees, to the Bradenton Herald (its staff numbers 210), great changes have taken place at the paper.
The "evening" part ended in 1983 when the Herald switched to a morning publication.
The Bradenton Herald moved from its 13th Street West location into its current 87,000-square-foot building on July 7, 1984.
- From Herald archives
