EDITOR’S NOTE: Townbroadcast columnist and uncanny finder of historic photos Kathy Hamman Miller somehow located this summary pot the life and death of the Wayland and Penasee Globe. She is a volunteer with the Then & Now Historical Library in Dorr.
by Kathy Hamman Miller
On Sept. 25, 1884, George A. Mosher printed the first issue of the Wayland Globe.
As a young man Mosher first worked at The Wayland News, where he learned the printing trade that was not in business for long, leading George to move to Petoskey, where he also worked as a printer. He branched out on to his own founding the Petoskey Record, later deciding to move back to his hometown of Wayland.
He shipped his printing plant to the first location in Wayland, to a small room that was on the second floor above the old Pickett store (located where the City Hall building is now) for a few years until it moved to the rear of the old Turner building (on East Superior behind what is now the City Hall building). It moved again to the old Gambles building (in the same area where the West Michigan Veterans Assistance Program is now on West Superior).
As with all growing businesses, he needed more room at this point so he went on to purchase the last two lots in the Chambers addition (where they once were, behind the City Hall building) until the shop was moved to where it was located for most of its years, across the street on the north side of East Superior Street.
When George Mosher died in 1919 his son, Rollo G. Mosher, who was stationed in Europe at the close of World War I, took over the family business, selling it to Irvin P. and Helen J. Helmey of Leslie in December 1953.
The paper was published and edited by the Moshers from 1884 to 1954, with the exception of about a year when it was edited by Fay C. Wing.
When George Mosher started the Wayland Globe, it was done by hand-setting letter by letter. His son, Rollo, had the first automatic typesetting equipment installed that he continued using until 1967, when the method of production was changed to a newer offset procedure.
The Globe was the first offset newspaper in the county.
The Helmeys sold the weekly publication to Nila Aamoth and Ron Carlson, retiring from the business in 1986. The name was then changed to the Penasee Globe because the newspaper Aamoth and Carlson had was called the Penasee Press.
The Penasee Globe was purchased by the Advance newspapers and stopped publishing with the Jan. 27, 2019 issue. It covered news in Wayland and the surrounding communities of Allegan County, including Moline, Martin, Dorr and Hopkins, and for a brief spell Middleville and Caledonia.
The paper was shut down in 2019 by MLive Media Group, a division of Advance Local Media, after being in business for almost 135 years, falling prey to the disease that has killed most community newspapers over the past 25 years.
Thank you David, for this interesting article about an important part of Wayland’s history. And thanks too for carrying it forward through Townbroadcast.