Union Daily Times
The newspaper occupied various buildings, dating from the first site when it had offices in a structure known as the “old police station,” but was printed in a livery stable. The daily survived a fire in 1912 and eventually moved into a fourteen-thousand-square-foot building in the county’s industrial park in 1992.
An evening newspaper, daily except Sunday, published in the city of Union. The Union Daily Times claims to be Union County’s oldest enterprise. Its ancestor was the Unionville Journal, a weekly founded on May 3, 1850, with B. F. Arthur as editor and Robert McKnight as publisher. The name was changed to the Unionville Times in 1859 and carried the states’ rights banner: “The Constitution as our fathers gave it, or separate independence.” After the Civil War the name was changed to the Weekly Union Times in 1869 and to the Union Times in 1894. The Reverend Lewis Malone Rice purchased the Union Times in 1906, converting it to a daily in 1917 and renaming it the Union Daily Times.
Rice died in 1946, and his grandson William R. Feaster served as editor and publisher until his death in 1967. Feaster’s widow, Dorothy, succeeded him as editor and publisher. In 1974 Mid-South Management Company bought the newspaper. When Dorothy Feaster retired, Donald E. Wilder served as publisher until 1995, when he was succeeded by David M. “Mike” Pippin. In 2002 Anthony Summerlin was the publisher.
The newspaper occupied various buildings, dating from the first site when it had offices in a structure known as the “old police station,” but was printed in a livery stable. The daily survived a fire in 1912 and eventually moved into a fourteen-thousand-square-foot building in the county’s industrial park in 1992. In 1996 the Times began complete pagination, integrating editorial and classified advertising layouts.
McNeely, Patricia G. The Palmetto Press: The History of South Carolina’s newspapers and the Press Association. Columbia: South Carolina Press Association, 1998.
