[5] During 1876, Leavitt and Stafford published several editions of a monthly called the Willimantic Enterprise, including one in late December in which they announced that they would begin weekly publication.
[6] In the inaugural edition of the Enterprise, Leavitt and Stafford informed readers: “We promote nothing except to do our best to make it a paper which will be acceptable to every family.
To do this, we need a correspondent in every town or village within 20 miles of us to send us short items of news that is of interests in their own town, all such news to reach us as early in the week as possible.” In the second edition, Leavitt printed a critique from The Bridgeport Standard: “The Willimantic Enterprise has reached us and presents a neat appearance.
In an interview with the Chronicle in 1903, Leavitt explained, “I had theatrical road fever, and early in 1879 I gladly turned over my equipment to my partner Fayette Safford, who very quickly formed a partnership with John A. MacDonald.”[7] Born in 1857, John Anthony MacDonald had learned the newspaper business at the weekly Windham County Transcript in the eastern Connecticut town of Danielson, near his birthplace of Brooklyn, Connecticut.
He decided that the young city might support a second daily newspapers besides The Willimantic Journal, which had been established in 1848 and would ultimately cease publication on January 27, 1911.
MacDonald's name inadvertently first appeared in the Enterprise on October 4, 1878, when it was reported that he's been badly injured when his hand got caught in Crandall's press.
Early in the fall of 1879, MacDonald bought half of the Enterprise from Safford plus invested additional capital to purchase new equipment: a steam-powered press.
MacDonald and Safford changed its name to the Willimantic Chronicle two years later and began Monday through Saturday publication as an afternoon daily in 1891.
Publication of an additional, weekly version of the Chronicle continued until 1902 until the advent of rural free delivery make it possible for readers to receive the daily newspaper the next day.
In 1902, he replaced this with the first Mergenthaler Linotype automatic typesetter in northeastern Connecticut, a machine which required a single operator but output quadruple the amount of type.
‘Mac’ was slight in stature, a snappily dressed man, who even in poor health at that time, came to the office daily in his hansom carriage driven by Mr. Tew, his coachman.
He would wander through the composing room daily, sometimes to compliment us or to complain about the appearance of the previous day's paper, or to stop and show someone how to set type or to feed the press.
Evidently he wanted to impress upon his employees that he had done it all, that he knew what he was talking about, that he had written the news and set in type and operated the press.” MacDonald, who had become increasingly ill with tuberculosis, spent his last day, December 4, 1904, at the Chronicle office.
Her 31-year-old son George Augustus Bartlett, who worked in virtually every job in the newspaper, assumed his stepfather’s titles of editor and publisher, but not political inclinations.
The month after her father died, his eldest daughter, Lucy Mae Bartlett, began working at the newspaper during her secondary school summer vacations.
[4] During the past four decades, this combination of the mill closures and resulting unemployment, failed city redevelopment, and reductions in Willimantic's tax base was economically devastating for regional businesses.
Central Connecticut Media are also the publishers of the Bristol Press, the New Britain Herald the Newington Town Crier, and Wethersfield Post.
On April 4, 2022, Central Connecticut Communications announced it had sold the Chronicle, along with The Bristol Press/The New Britain Herald, to Rhode Island Suburban Newspapers, publishers of The Westerly Sun, The Kent County Daily Times, The Call of Woonsocket, The Times of Pawtucket, Independent and Southern RI Newspapers.
[20] Since its debut on January 4, 1877, the Chronicle has missed only five days of publication: three due to loss of electrical power after the 1938 New England hurricane, and for the funerals of publisher John MacDonald and George A. Bartlett.
During its history, the Chronicle has published two ‘extra’ editions: one on the day during 1901 when U.S. President William McKinley was assassinated and for September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.