Baker Bulletin Board

Predecessor to a local newspaper, the Baker Bulletin Board was a weekly news sheet supplied to each post office box holder by Baker Food Mart located in Friendswood, Texas from 1954 to 1966.  The week's grocery specials were printed on the front side and local community announcements, news, and classifieds were printed on the back.  That information was volunteered by the school superintendent, the local pastors, and community organizations.  The copy was cut on stencils and printed on a manual mimeograph, folded and mailed with Friendswood postal permit #1.  Friendswood community of 960 people in 1960 grew to a city with 5,675 people by 1970.  Joycina grew up in the family printing business where she operated a linotype during her high school and college years. [Friendswood: A Settlement of Friendly Folks by Joycina Day Baker, Sheridan Books, Inc. USA, 1994, pp. 77, 81, 100, 134]   

Through a phone conversation with Joycina Day Baker, she shared that her father-in-law James Thistlethwaite Baker suggested the idea of creating a news sheet to advertise.  She wrote the community news section and her husband James Mark (Jim) Baker drew the grocery ads.  They created, copied, and folded a new issue each Wednesday and placed copies in each post office box that evening ready for pickup Thursday morning.  They received the first mail permit issued by the Friendswood Post Office.  Production of the news sheet was stopped in 1966 when Friendswood’s first newspaper began.

This digitized collection consists of 138 issues of the Baker Bulletin Board.  The earliest issue is dated May 12, 1955 and the latest issue is dated May 26, 1966.  The digitial images are PDF files that include OCR.  Keyword search against the typed text is available.