Letters to the Editor

Dear Editor:

How thrilling to find your latest issue in the mail. It was a great disappointment when the paper ceased publishing. There is nothing like a local newspaper to maintain a sense of community and continuity.

Thank you to the Ailes family for recognizing the unique and invaluable qualities of a local newspaper, and for stepping up to take on the challenge of publishing this one.

Congratulations, and thank you.

Charles Mintz

Mahopac

Dear Editor:

We are thrilled that you have acquired the Putnam County Courier, and look forward to the same "Fair and Balanced" news reporting that we enjoy on FoxNews Channel. Already in this first issue, we can see the changes in that direction.

Elaine Wolfson

Brewster

Dear Editor:

I am delighted to see the Courier publishing again. As president of the Carmel-Kent Chamber of Commerce, I had made some inquiries toward reviving it through a joint effort of the local business community, but we were clearly beaten to the punch.

As the 2007 Democratic candidate for Supervisor of Kent, I hope that the Ailes family will not forget that this newspaper was originally titled The Putnam County Democrat.

The Courier name was adopted when James D. Little bought it in 1852 (he had edited it when it was known as the Democrat Courier and owned by Elijah Yerkes, but the 1841 founder was not Mr. Little but William H. Sloat).

Ownership passed into and out of the Little family repeatedly through at least the 1880s,before James Zickler purchased it (as I recall, Dorothy Jewell told me he bought it in 1896, but by the time of the 1940 quotations in your historical article her father Willit Jewell was publisher, having long served as Mr. Zickler's assistant).

You make no mention of the Jewell ownership that lasted until Dorothy sold the paper to John Mullen; after his death in a train accident his widow Virginia was publisher until selling it to editor Howard Burr. The Burrs' retirement was the start of the fluctuating chain ownerships that I hope are now over with the paper squarely in Putnam County hands again.

May the void the missing Courier left remain filled, there is no substitute for the hometown voice.

Louis Epstein Kent Lakes