PHILIP ANDREW KAUFER It is not
stating the fact too strongly to say that nearly all of
the bright and enterprising young men at the head of the
country weekly newspapers of Minnesota have come to
occupy these positions through their own industry and
pluck. Philip A. Kaufer, publisher of the Red Lake Falls
Gazette, is not an exception to the rule.
When but fifteen years of age
he began active work in a newspaper office, working as a
printer’s “devil” on the Red Lake Falls Gazette. With industrious
and sober habits, and improvement in his general
education by close observation and study, he found
himself in a position to become the proprietor of this
paper in 1892, after nine years of newspaper training.
He has conducted the Gazette since that time, and with
highly satisfactory results. The Gazette is now the
official paper of Red Lake Falls city and of Red Lake
County, of which Red Lake Falls is the county seat. Mr.
Kaufer is a native of this state, and was born at
Mankato, July 22, 1868. He is the son of H. B. Kaufer
and Monica Fitterer ( Kaufer). Both parents are of
German descent.
The father is still living at the age of
seventy-six, virile and bright as a man of fifty years.
He established the first pottery manufactory in
Minnesota at Mankato, and has acquired a sufficient
fortune to make himself independent financially by his
operations in that business, and through judicious real
estate investments. His wife is an unusually well read
woman, of high ideals, and well informed on all current
questions of the day. She was born in the backwoods of
Indiana, and was taught to read German by her mother.
Her knowledge of English was acquired unaided.
Philip received his
elementary training in the Catholic college of Mankato,
which was supplemented by attendance at the Mankato
public schools. The boy imbibed his mother’s taste for
the acquirement of general knowledge, and this, with the
sturdy and industrious characteristics inherited from
his parents, enabled him to persevere in his chosen
profession and to finally secure ownership of the paper
on which he had labored. Mr. Kaufer is a member of the
Roman Catholic church. He was married September 3, 1894
to Lizzie A. Boyle, a teacher in the public schools of
Red Lake Falls, and has one child, Philip A. Kaufer. jr.
born June 22, 1896.
