Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 1.djvu/107

 COL. HENRY O. KENT.

���COL. HENRY O. KENT.

��and graduated from Norwich University in the class of 1854. Entering the office of Hon. Jacob Benton as a student of law, he pursued his studies until 1858, when he was admitted to the bar at the May Term of Court at Lancaster. Short- ly after, he became the proprietor of the Coos Bepublican, and assumed the edito- rial and business management of that paper, his strong interest in political affairs and the fortunes of the Republi- can party, with which he was actively identified, impelling him to this step, in taking which he relinquished the pros- pect of a distinguished and successful career at the bar. In the management of the Bepublican, both financial and edi- torial, he displayed rare skill and ability. His leading articles were al ways strong, vigorous, earnest, and secured for his paper, notwithstanding its remote loca- tion from the capital, an influential posi- tion among the party journals of the State, and considerate recognition by the press of other States. It is safe to say that from the time when he assumed its management until 1870, when he sold it

��to its present managers,— a period of twelve years, — no paper in the State ren- dered more efficient support to the party with which it was allied, or advocated more heartily all measures tending to advance the material prosperity of the section in which it was located, than did the Coos Bepublican under the direction of Col. Kent.

Since 1870, Col. Kent has attended to a large and growing general office busi- ness, to which he had formerly given more or less attention ; and also to the interests of the Savings Bank of the County of Coos, for which institution he secured- a charter in 1868, and of which he is and has been Treasurer. He is also an owner and the present manager of the Lancaster Paper Co., an industry furnish- ing a market for much of the straw and wood of the surrounding region, and em- ployment for quite a number of people. The Pleasant Valley Starch Mill is also an enterprise with which he is connected and of which he is Treasurer. The en- couragement of local enterprise and in- dustry has always been one of his eb"~-

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