This was a weekly paper named the Oshkosh Herald. In the following year the Colonel sold out to Calkins and Loob. Calkins soon disappeared, but Loob continued to publish the Herald for a few months longer. Will Twiford acted as editor until tjre spring of 1908, when R. A. Day and Charles Tomppert bought the business and were soon publishing the Herald as an eight page paper, printing two pages of it in their office.

In the fall of 1908, Mr. Tomppert and Walter Bentz formed a partnership, and embarked on the sea of journalism, in full charge and ownership of the Herald. Thev managed to print four pages each week on their Washington hand press. Within a year, they had increased the circulation to several hundred and were doing a paying business.

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

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In 1910, the business was incorporated under the name of Tomppert-Bentz Company, the stock being held by Charles Tomppert, P. J. Bentz, Walter Bentz, Clyde Bentz. Pearl Bentz and Roy Bentz. The new company at once put in modern machinery and built a good new office building.

For the two years following, the Oshkosh Herald bid fair to become the model newspaper of the Great Plains. Dissension arose among the stockholders and Mr. Tomppert finding himself out-voted at every turn by the Bentz family, sold out to them for what he could get and gracefully retired from the Company.

He at once planned to established a rival paper, and in August, 1912, bought out the Garden County News which Mr. Warner had been running for two or three years at Lewellen, bought a new press and linotype, and proceeded to make the old News the biggest and best paper in the county. 1300 copies of the Nezvs is now printed each week.