The newspaper was founded in 1884 as the
Evening Capital and operated under this name until June 20, 1981, when it was shortened to just
The Capital. Its founder was William M. Abbott, a former compositor for
The Baltimore Sun, who employed his daughter Emma Abbott Gage as the newspaper's editor and his son Charles B. Abbott as business manager. In 1910, Abbott purchased the weekly
Maryland Gazette from Col. Phillip E. Porter and merged the paper with his
Capital, creating the
Evening Capital and Maryland Gazette. In the years following the
Civil War, Annapolis faded economically, and the pages of the
Evening Capital mostly reflected the local happenings of a sleepy, provincial town. During the early 20th century, the expansion of the nearby
United States Naval Academy was recorded in the paper as a source of both optimism and concern for local citizens. Abbott and his family handed over ownership of the paper to Ridgely P. Melvin in 1919, and it reverted to its original name of
Evening Capital in 1922. Melvin subsequently sold the
Capital to the Capital-Gazette Press Company in 1926. For much of the 20th century, the
Capital was edited by Elmer Jackson, Jr., who had been appointed in 1931. In 1959, it added a Saturday morning edition. In 1967, the newspaper and its sisters were sold to
Philip Merrill and
Landmark Communications, which shared ownership. Jackson was replaced as editor. Under this ownership, which lasted until 2007, the
Capital saw great success, with its circulation nearly tripling. After Merrill's death in 2006, Landmark obtained full ownership of the paper; it kept this ownership until 2014, when the
Capital and its related holdings were sold to the Baltimore Sun Media Group, a
tronc company. Its change to a seven-day-a-week morning paper was announced on February 8, 2015, and implemented on March 9. The papers are printed on a computerized high-speed
Goss International Headliner press. ==Shooting==