- RICHARD FRANKLIN PETTIGREW. Richard Franklin PETTIGREW, the
famous radical
- Silver Republican Senator from South Dakota, was born in
Ludlow, Vermont, July 26, 1848, his father being a merchant of
that place. When the future political leader was six years old,
the family removed to Rock County, Wisconsin, settling first
in Union and then in Evansville in the same township. He prepared
for college in the Evansville Academy, and in 1866 went to Beloit
and entered the college there. He started to work his way through
the course by taking care of one of the college buildings. While
so engaged his father died and he was compelled to return home
and assume the management of the farm, thus cutting his college
course to two years. Young PETTIGREW, however, did not relax
his studies. For one term he taught school near home, and another
winter he was similarly employed near Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He
spent the spring of 1869 in the law school of the University
of Wisconsin, and thus finished his school education.
- In July, 1869, Mr. PETTIGREW went to Dakota as a laborer
in the employ of a United States
- deputy surveyor. The route led them to the present site of
Sioux Falls, and the young man then and there decided to make
that part of the West his home. Having been admitted to the bar
at Janesville, Wisconsin, in 1870, as soon as spring opened he
started for Sioux Falls again, arriving there, after weeks of
delay by bad roads and high water, with just 25 cents in his
pocket.
- Mr. PETTIGREW at once engaged in the surveying and real estate
business. He opened a law
- office in 1872 and has been engaged in the practice of his
profession in Sioux Falls ever since. He was elected to the Dakota
Legislature as a member of the Council in 1877 and 1879. He was
a delegate to the Forty-seventh Congress from Dakota Territory,
and came back to the Council in 1884. He was a member of the
South Dakota Constitutional Convention in 1883, and was chairman
of the Committee on Public Indebtedness, framing the provisions
of the constitution on that subject. He was elected to the United
States Senate in 1889 when South Dakota was admitted to the Union,
and was re-elected in 1895. His term of service will expire March
3, 1901.
-
- [Taken from "The Battle of 1900" by L. White
Busbey, Willis J. Abbot, Oliver W. Stewart & Dr. Howard S.
Taylor; (c)1900 Thompson & Hood, Chicago; p. 70]
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