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TO THE PUBLIC With this issue the SENTINEL passes into the hands of Wm. Hoffstead and Herbert Ahlstrom; the senior partner in the old firm, Ole Anderson, having disposed of his interest to Mr. Ahlstrom. The policy of the SENTINEL will be the same in the future as in the past: to work for the interest of Grantsburg and Burnett County; to give the news fresh and unadulturated and to promote the best interests both for the paper and its readers. The principles of the Republican party will still be advocated and upheld in our columns and the honest and fearless position the SENTINEL has taken in the past will be maintained in the future. Our job department has lately been enlarged with a lot of new type and other materials and our patrons can depend upon us to do good work at reasonable prices. The latch string of the SENTINEL office always hangs on the outside. Subscribers from in and out of town are invited to make themselves at home in our establishment. Grantsburg,Wis., March 1st, 1899. |
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Hoffstead's last few years at the Sentinel were not easy ones. His leg was badly broken when he was thrown from a runaway carriage and his final two years at the Sentinel were clouded by health problems and various treatments for the broken leg.
After describing his problems at length in the pages of the Sentinel he finally sought treatment in St. Paul and caught typhoid while in the hospital. He sold his interest in the paper in 1901, ending a five-year relationship with the Sentinel. Newspapering was clearly a difficult way to make a living at that time. In the winter, the paper frequently advertised that it would accept its payments in firewood and commonly inserted pointed comments at subscribers who had not paid their bills. Shortly before Hoffstead left, however, the Sentinel expanded from its original four pages and upgraded its press. In his last weeks as editor, Hoffstead gave readers a serialized account of his treatment--in Norwegian.
Copyright 1996 Larry Myrland Harnisch |