The St. Mary Banner Archive

The St. Mary Banner, a weekly newspaper in Franklin, Louisiana, published its first issue on April 15, 1889. From the start, it was a mouthpiece of the Democratic Party establishment of St. Mary Parish. The president of its publishing company was Murphy J. Foster, the son of a prominent sugar planter who was an attorney and state senator in his own right. He later served as governor of Louisiana between 1892 and 1900. Henry Stirling Palfrey, the secretary and treasurer, was the son of William Taylor Palfrey, a St. Mary Parish planter, judge, sheriff, and state senator. The paper was edited by Donelson Caffery Jr., whose father likewise was an important attorney, sugar planter, and state senator. Donelson Caffery Sr. was appointed to a vacant US Senate seat at the end of 1892 and later won election in his own right, serving until 1901 (when, not surprisingly, he was succeeded by Murphy Foster).

The beginnings of the St. Mary Banner are rather unclear because very few early issues have survived, but control of the newspaper had passed to Jared Young Sanders, a future Louisiana governor, by 1891. It remained a staunch Democratic Party organ in 1900 when it celebrated the election of William Wright Heard for governor over its former editor, Donelson Caffery Jr., who had mounted an utterly hopeless campaign at the head of a hapless faction of the Republican Party. W.H. Latham became editor and proprietor later that year, and kept up the Democrat editorial line until he threw the paper behind the Progressive cause in 1916.

The St. Mary Banner merged with the Franklin Tribune, another local newspaper that had existed for only six months, at the close of 1931 to form the Banner-Tribune. It still exists today as the St. Mary and Franklin Banner-Tribune.