The season was changing. “Berrying days are buried,” the Ticonderoga Sentinel reported on September 8, 1876. “The evenings are delightful, and some persons are covering over the more delicate plants to keep off the frost.”
There was even bigger change afoot at the local weekly newspaper, under new ownership. The two-and-a-half-year-old newspaper made its first political endorsements – for Republican presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes and gubernatorial candidate Edwin D. Morgan.
The Sentinel Association, the new owners of the Essex County, NY newspaper, insisted it would remain an “independent.”
“It will hereafter be an ‘independent’ newspaper, condemning what it believes to be wrong, and upholding and advocating what it believes to be right. It will not aim to be
partisan, and in all contests, political or otherwise, will endeavor to be fair and impartial,” an editorial stated. “But, in the present struggle for supremacy between the
two great parties of the day, we cannot remain neutral. Our duty as a citizen forbids it.”
The new ownership asked for subscribers, at a cost of $1.50 annually, the equivalent of $43 in 2024 dollars, payable in advance.
“Having assumed the management of the Sentinel, we ask for it, the earnest support of all interested in its growth, prosperity and highest well-being of Ticonderoga and vicinity. The task before us is not an easy one,” the editorial stated.
“A local paper the town needs. We have agricultural interests to be noticed, manufacturing and mercantile enterprises to be encouraged, unrivaled water power to be improved, vast mineral wealth to be developed, magnificent natural scenery to be seen and enjoyed.”
Illustration: The first Ticonderoga Sentinel, published in February, 1874.
