[2][3][4][5] The Montgomery County Sentinel was first published as a weekly newspaper on August 11, 1855 by Matthew Fields in Rockville, Maryland.

On two occasions, once before and once during the Civil War, the paper suffered brief interruptions while Union military forces detained Matthew Fields, a Southern sympathizer.

The editors of the Sentinel took a firm stance against the Emancipation Act believing that it encouraged the occurrence of a racial war.

[11] The Fields family maintained ownership of the Sentinel until 1932, when they sold the newspaper to Paul Griffith Stromberg.

[13] In its centennial year, the Stromberg family sold the Sentinel to Louis Linebach and Cy Campbell.

[16] After failing a two-week trial hiring at The Washington Post in 1970, Bob Woodward spent a year at the Sentinel as a reporter.