Charles H. Grasty

Charles H Grasty

Charles H Grasty, Newspaper Publisher

Charles Henry Grasty was a well-known American newspaper operator who at one time controlled the Baltimore Sun, and who is named among the great publishers, such as Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. Grasty owned the Evening News, which he ran for a number of years and later sold prior to acquiring the Minnesota Dispatch and the St. Paul Pioneer Press in separate transactions and later divesting these newspapers to seek ownership of the Sun. Grasty was one of the developers of the Roland Park development, said to be an early innovation in community planning, including planned shopping centers and other aspects of the community prior to development.

Charles H. Grasty was born March 3, 1863 in Fincastle, Virginia, the son of a Presbyterian minister, the Reverend John Sharshall Grasty, and the former Ella Giles Pettus, and as a bright youth taught Latin while in high school. At age 16 he entered University of Missouri to study law, but left before graduating to enter the newspaper business. He stayed on at a summer job reporting for the Mexico Intelligencer paying $6 a week, and then was offered $7 a week to join the Kansas City Star, where he rose to managing editor within 18 months.

In 1890 he married Leota Tootle Perrin, a woman with a daughter from another marriage named Sarah Perrin (Sarah Perrin was married to Lieutenant George de Grasse Catlin in Lake Placid New York August 18, 1909). That same year, Grasty became the general manager of the Manufacturers' Record, a weekly business journal in Baltimore, leaving the Kansas City Star.

Grasty was involved in developing Roland Park in Baltimore when he also assembled investors to back his acquisition of the Evening News in 1892. Through the Evening News he attacked local political corruption, but maintained political independence. He came out against the Baltimore Sun as a competing newspaper for its willingness to ignore Baltimore political corruption, at the time not knowing that over a decade later he would take control of that newspaper. His efforts to root out corruption in Baltimore politics ensured the loss of power by incumbent Democrats Arthur Pue Gorman, who lost the United States Senate seat from which he had dominated Maryland politics for years. In addition, he saw the unseating of I. Freeman Rasin, Gorman's ally and "Boss" in control of Baltimore, who was defeated for City Council. Grasty’s 1893 accusations against Democratic politicians for their involvement in gambling schemes earned him a libel suit, which he won.