Monticello Times newspaper marks 167 years of printing

This month, the Monticello Times is celebrating its 167th birthday, making it the fifth-oldest newspaper in Minnesota.

The city’s newspaper of record has a long and storied history, which dates back nearly as long as the founding of Monticello itself in 1856. It includes myriad owners, editors and even different names and political leanings over this period.

The first Monticello Times was issued on May 2, 1857, under editor and proprietor Charles M. Kenton. Originally, it was a six-column weekly democratic newspaper that was released every Thursday, and the price of a yearly subscription at that time was $2.

While many things have changed over the past 167 years — including the price of the paper, which now costs the same for a single copy on newsstands as it did for a yearly subscription at its inception — the publication date has not, with the paper still released on Thursdays.

Due to sparse settlement in the county at the time, the paper had only a small list of subscribers and, in the following year, with the county and legal printing, plus the advertising not amounting to much, the paper suspended itself. It was also in this year that almost all other local businesses closed.

Zadock Brown purchased the office and materials from Kenton, and, a year later, Kenton sold the defunct paper to George Gray. Kenton left Monticello and went back to his native Ohio, dying at the age of 60 in 1895 from Bright’s Disease.

As for the paper, Gray did some reorganization and, on Thursday, June 30, 1859, he started to publish and print The Wright County Republican.

As the name implies, the new paper had different political beliefs than its previous counterpart. This version could best be described as a semi-weekly affair and Gray would run it throughout its entirety (later transitioning to Saturday as the day for release). The last edition was on Nov. 23, 1861.

The following Saturday after that, Gray released the first edition of the North Western Weekly Union, a paper that would run until April 18, 1863, after which Gray then sold the paper to Samuel Bennett.

Bennett renamed the paper The Courier, which had a short-lived campaign from Saturday, April 25 to Saturday, July 25, 1863. Gray then bought back the paper from Bennett, and again he changed the name, this time becoming The Northern Statesmen, which was quite similar in publication to The Wright County Republican.

Throughout the rest of that decade, Gray would run the paper without hindrance, and, in 1871, he sold the rights to T. A. Perrine.

Perrine reorganized and enlarged the paper, basically defining its structure for the next half a century, and, starting on Saturday, June 3, 1871, the newspaper was known as The Wright County Times.

Under Perrine, the paper expanded to the far reaches of Wright County, as well as Sherburne and Stearns counties too.

In 1878, he sold the paper to Fisher and Kling, but, due to their lack of knowhow, it suffered and, in 1880, the office and material was purchased by the Civil War colonel and early local settler Sam E. Adams.

Unlike Fisher and Kling, Adams turned the paper into a “first class family progressive newspaper” as was written by Daniel R. Farnham of The Delano Eagle.

In 1882, Adams sold this successful affair to G.W. McDonald, and later, around 1886, Clarence Augustus French purchased the paper.

French was born March 1, 1853, on board a ship at Portsmouth, England. His father, Capt. William Wallace French, was a sea captain, and Clarence's mother often sailed with him, along with the children until they became of school age. In 1865, French’s father was killed by some mutinous crew members near the port of Pernambuco, Brazil.

In the following years after purchasing the paper, French would advocate and help initiate the building of a bridge across the Mississippi River at Monticello.

Having apparently tried three times before he finally succeeded in his fourth attempt, a bridge was constructed in 1892 for a price of $10,000 ($7,000 of which was paid solely by the Monticello Township and $3,000 by Sherburne County).

This enterprise brought French a lot of bad press from some of the neighboring newspapers.

Sometime between 1871 and 1894, the paper changed back from a Saturday release to its current Thursday schedule.

On May 31, 1906, the last edition of the Wright County Times was printed, and, the following Thursday, June 7, the Monticello Times was printed again for the first time in what was then 48 years.

Around May 27, 1914, French sold the paper to O. G. Bates and, on Sept. 8, 1915, Bates sold the paper to G. R. Wedgewood.

Under Wedgewood, the manager of the Times was W. R. Hamlet, but their running of this establishment wouldn't last long because, at some point between January and May 1916, the paper was sold back to French.

In this second term of ownership, French would come to employ the assistance of H. F. Rubey, beginning with the June 26, 1924, edition of the Times.

For the next decade, they would run the paper together before French sold the rights completely to Rubey in 1935. Rubey took on the help of his wife and, throughout World War II, they would keep the paper going.

Reasonably, exhaustion ensued and due to that, they sold the paper to Les. E. Nelson and Donald J. Bloomquist on March 21, 1946.

In 1948, A. J. Oliver took up their offer and purchased the paper. He had already been in the newspaper business some 24 years by that point, including seven years running a newspaper in Elma, Iowa, before coming to Monticello.

In April 1950, Oliver sold the paper to Earl and Pearl Hunter, who would run it as a “Joint-Tenant” affair, and, in October 1958, after seeing the 100th year of the Times, the Hunters sold it to Monte and Betty Mason.

The Masons ran the paper for a short while before later selling it to Lynn R. Smith in August 1962. Smith was a native of Crosby and a World War II veteran. Before coming to Monticello, he was a publisher of the Carver County News in Watertown for 10 years.

Under Smith, the Monticello Times won the Mills Trophy over seven years, being recognized as the outstanding weekly in the Minnesota Newspaper Association’s annual contest.

It also was honored by the National Newspaper Association, named as a first-place winner for general excellence in a coast-to-coast comparison against weeklies of similar circulation.

In June 1971, Smith’s son, Don, would join the Times as an editor.

As for Lynn, his columns and editorials were often devoted to non-smoking efforts and his creativity and commitment led to the Monticello D-Day (Don't Smoke Day) which took place on January 6, 1974.

He was so successful with this small-town campaign that two Minnesota Don't Smoke Days followed and later the grassroots effort was taken up nationally by the American Cancer Society in 1976.

In January of the following year, he passed the paper on to his son, Don Smith and his wife Nancy. Don Smith would solidly run the paper for 34 years, only finally selling on May 31, 2005, to American Community Newspapers.

American Community Newspapers was bought out by ECM Publishers in 2012, and ECM was later bought out in 2016 by Adams Publishing Group, or APG, the paper's current owner.

Here are the chief editors of the Times since Smith’s departure: Eric O’Link, June 9, 2005 to June 22, 2006; Kim Garberich, June 23 to July 20, 2006; Kathleen Ostroot, July 20, 2006 to Sept. 27, 2007; Mike Schoemer, Oct. 4, 2007 to Nov. 25, 2010; Greg Huff, Nov. 27 to Dec. 14, 2010; Paul Nolan, Dec. 16, 2010 to May 10, 2012; Sam Aselstine, May 17 to July 26, 2012; Paul Rignell (as interim editor), Aug. 2 to Sept. 6, 2012; Tim Hennagir, Sept. 6, 2012 to July 24, 2017; Clay Sawatzke (who started as a sports columnist for the Times in 2011), July 24 to Dec. 14, 2017; Jeff Hage, Dec. 21, 2017 to Nov. 30, 2023; and the current editor, Lauren Flaum, who took over Dec. 1, 2023.

For being the fifth-oldest newspaper in Minnesota, our history is reasonably storied, but it’s certainly an interesting one to read about. After 167 years serving the community, I surely hope it has many more to come. Don’t you?

Ayden Irwin is an eleventh-grade student at Monticello High School. An avid local history buff and genealogist, he serves as the city’s unofficial historian.