Editor’s note: Usually from the pages of The Banner, this week’s column features an article from The Baltimore Sun from 1947, on The Banner’s 50th anniversary.

70 years ago

Serving the public through three wars, The Daily Banner, the oldest daily publication on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary. The entire week has been designated as Fiftieth Anniversary week, and historical sketches and special stories will be published in the Cambridge newspaper owned and published by Arnold Daane.

Founding editors were Lindsay C. Marshall and Armistead H. Michie, who had started the Banner as a weekly in Warrenton, Va. Becoming dissatisfied, they moved to Cambridge and began. At that time, it was a four-page, six-column publication, while today it is eight columns wide and caries from six to sixteen pages.

In 1910, the Marshall-Michie interests were purchased by P. Watson Webb, who was publishing the Cambridge Record, a tri-weekly Dorchester County paper. Webb, now a member of the State Roads Commission, sold the Banner in February, 1940, to Daane who came here from Washington, where he was associated with the United States Department of Agriculture.Prior to that time, Daane was co-publisher of a weekly and a daily paper in Austin, Minn., and was an editorial writer for the Pioneer Press in St. Paul, Minn.

Managing editor of the Banner is Miss Elsie McNamara, who has been on the editorial staff since September, 1926.

The Banner was read widely from the turn of the century. The paper was circulated among the captains and crews of the huge oyster fleet, as well as throughout the entire Shore area.

Since its establishment, many of the Banner’s printers and carrier boys have risen to places of prominence in business and professional fields.

Among this group is a family of four brothers. The oldest, Charles V. Brannock, started as a printer’s devil with the Banner, and has for years been president of the Baltimore Typographical Union.

Another is the Rev. Dr. Willis H. Brannock, pastor of Gregory Memorial Baptist Church, in Baltimore. Ernest J. Brannock heads a large Baltimore contracting firm, and Fred A. Brannock is a Cambridge merchant.

The Bannner is 26 years older than the Salisbury Times, the only other daily publication on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.