With this issue of the Gazette the undersigned, after over thirty-two years’ occupancy of its editorial chair, vacates the same, having this week sold the paper and its goodwill to Henry Beetle Hough, a gentlemen, who, by reason of education, training and family tradition, will we believe carry the GAZETTE to a yet wider sphere of influence and to a high prosperity.

 

On assuming the position in March, 1888, and which we now resign, we did so with the aim to make the paper a welcome weekly visitor in the homes of the Vineyard, and to maintain, if possible, the high standard set by its honored founder and the several successful editors who had filled the chair in the intervening years. How well we have succeeded in these aspirations it is not for us to say, except that we have tried to do our best.

 

The steady increase of patronage proves that the paper, if not large and influential, still has won a firm place in public favor. Its circulation is large for a country journal and its advertising patronage lucrative. In these respects we retire from the management with perhaps pardonable pride.

 

But we cannot lay aside the pen without thanking a host of friends in all parts of the island who have by kind words of encouragement and a generous patronage sustained us through the long period of years.

 

In the words of a former editor we may say that we have loved the paper, and the work it has imposed upon us, and we would not retire now did we not feel assured that in the new hands to which we commit it, it will go on to increased usefulness in our island community and the change result in much that will redound to the advancement of the material and moral upbuilding of our Vineyard towns. 

 

Mr. Hough, the new editor and publisher, will pardon us for a few personal words of introduction. He is a son of Mr. George A. Hough, the able managing editor of the New Bedford Standard, and a grandson of the late Capt. Henry W. Beetle of Vineyard Haven, who for many years was the Deputy Collector of Customs at that port. Mr. Hough is well acquainted with newspaper work, for he comes of a family long affiliated with journalism. Besides his father, a brother, Mr. George A. Hough, Jr., is connected with the Standard, as city editor, and he is related to the Anthonys, who have published that popular daily for many years.

 

Mr. Hough is a graduate, 1918, of the School of Journalism at Columbia College, New York, and was president of his class. Two years ago he and Miss Minna Lawinson of New York, were awarded jointly the Pulitzer Prize of $1,000 for “the best history of the services rendered to the public by the American press during the preceding year.”

 

We bespeak for the new management of the Gazette the generous patronage which has been accorded to the office in the past, and feel sure that Mr. Hough will receive the cordial greetings of the whole community where he purposes to take up his permanent residence.

 

The former editor will still be connected with the office for an indefinite time.

 

- Charles H. Marchant