A country newspaper rarely makes its mark in the journalistic world,
and especially a paper printed in such an obscure village as is
Whitehall, New York. The Whitehall Times, however, is one of the few
exceptions, and, although a country newspaper, has been quoted in every
paper of any note in the land.
William Albert Wilkins, the editor and proprietor of the Times, and the
one man who has made that journal famous, was born on the 26th day of
March, 1840, in the village of Cherry Valley, Otsego county, New York.
At the age of ten he removed with his parents to Cohoes, in the same
State, where he attended a common district school for several years. He
entered business as office boy in the village post-office. From this
position he was elevated to a travelling salesman, doing business for
a firm in Albany. A year later, however, he settled down to real life
as a retail clothing merchant at Whitehall. In this pursuit Wilkins was
quite successful, and for eleven years he continued in the business.
Wilkins says that the first important discovery of his life was when he
embarked in the printing business. “Then,” says he, “it was easier to
convince nine-tenths of the human family that the inhabitants of the
infernal regions employ their time skating on real ice ponds, than it
is to convince them that they cannot conduct a live newspaper. While a
merchant in the town of Whitehall, Mr. Wilkins began writing--along in
the fall of 1869--several humorous communications for the Weekly Times,
the very paper which he afterwards owned. His articles were signed
“Hiram Green, esquire, Lait justiss of the Peece.” His sketches were
bright and original, and after doing all he could to supply the crusty
Whitehallites with humor, he began a series of letters in the Troy
Budget, which he continued for several years.
In 1870 what appeared as his guiding star shone over his horizon. A
new comic weekly paper had just been introduced to the residents of
New York. It was known as Punchinello, and its publisher made William
Albert Wilkins, of Whitehall, a handsome offer to assume the editorial
chair. Wilkins was not long in making a decision whether to accept
the offer or no. In an evil moment he bade good-bye to the clothing
business and hied himself to New York. His salary and the paper ended
their existence in five months’ time, and the Whitehall merchant was
cast adrift in the great metropolis. He remained in New York and was
employed with a leading wholesale clothing house until April, 1873.
During his sojourn in the city he wrote regularly for the Tribune, Sun,
and Mail, as well as doing occasional work for the Brooklyn Eagle,
Albany Argus, and several of the many weekly journals published in
Gotham.
In the early May days of 1874 Wilkins returned to Whitehall, and his
first love, the Times, became his property. Since that time he has been
its editor and proprietor, and has made for it a name that takes first
rank among the newspapers of America made famous by their humorous
paragraphs.
Mr. Wilkins has a wife, two children, and a charming home. Of his
family he says: “None of my relatives have ever been hung, but once a
brother-in-law came near going to Congress. My war record is good--as
during the rebellion I did not have a hand in the public treasury, but
a second cousin of my wife sent a substitute, who by jumping bounties
like a true patriot, covered the family with glory enough to reach me.”
As a politician, Mr. Wilkins succeeded through the aid of his paper
and his friends, in holding one office, three times being collector of
canal tolls at the port of Whitehall, during the years 1874, 1875,
and 1878. He is a very small man, being something like five feet four
inches in height. He possesses a pleasant cheery face, and adorns
the lower portion of it with a moustache of a heavy and a beard of a
light growth. His literary work has of late years been devoted almost
exclusively to the Times. Recently he has essayed domestic sketches,
stories of the home circle, and romantic tales of travel and adventure.
A New York humorist says admiringly of Wilkins: “He is a trump card
in the fraternity he adorns. Never a stone has he laid in the path
of an earnest fellow laborer. Meet him when you will and where you
will, there is the same cordial impressment, the same hand-grip that
goes straight to your marrow of susceptibility. It has been my lot
to meet him when conviviality held full sway, and again when family
affliction had tightly drawn the chords of sympathy; but the same
gentle spirit was the thrall. The world is better for such lives;
better for the kindly sentiments that emanate from minds charged less
with self-opinion than liberal thoughts of and for mankind; better for
the outflow of their broad religion, and safer because it is a religion
of impulse, a creed born of sentiment and fostered by philanthrophy.”
Wilkins’ admirable essay on Father Adam is undoubtedly the best thing
he has written. It was originally published in the Whitehall Times in
1879, and is as follows: