NORTHWESTERN IOWA ITS HISTORY AND TRADITION VOLUME II 1804-1926 F. M. PELLETIER To the careers and activities of such men as Frank M. Pelletier is Sioux City indebted for its present high standing among the cities of the middle west, for he has contributed in a large way to its material prosperity and its financial standing. Beginning life here is a modest way, he gradually forged ahead and in the course of time became one of the leading business men of his community, a position which he has held for many years, so that today few in this city command to as great a degree as he the respect and admiration of the people. Frank M. Pelletier was born in St. Anne, Kankakee county, Illinois, on the 11th of December, 1864, and is a son of Abram and Helen (Martin) Pelletier, the former a native of Rouse's Point, New York, and the latter of Three Rivers, Quebec, Canada. They were married in 1848 in St. Anne to which place the mother had been taken when a child of four years. Abram Pelletier was a farmer by occupation and his son Frank was reared amid rural surroundings. He received his education in the public schools of his home town but left school at the age of thirteen years to enter a dry goods store as errand boy. A year later he went to Chicago and secured a position in Marshall Field's store, remaining there a year, when, desiring to fit himself for a business career, he entered Byant & Stratton's Business College, at the same time securing a position as night clerk in a business concern which paid his board and incidental expenses. He graduated from the business school in 1879 and then secured a position with the Chicago branch of the A. T. Stewart Company, of New York. James H. Walker, who later organized the Burke-Walker wholesale dry goods firm, took over the Stewart business there and Mr. Pelletier remained in the credit department of the Burke-Walker Company for three years. In 1882 he started for Huron, South Dakota, but on reaching Sioux City was so impressed with the town that he decided to locate here. He bought a grocery store, which he conducted from October to the following June, when, deciding that he was not adapted to that line of business, he sold the store and went to work for the T. S. Martin Dry Goods Company, with which he remained about six months, when he resigned and entered the employ of C. G. Culver & Company, the founders of the business of which he is now the head. Some three years later he acquired a working partnership in the firm and in 1894, after the death of Mr. Culver and the liquidation of the firm, it was succeeded by the Parsons-Pelletier Company. In 1896 the Parsons brothers withdrew and Mr. Pelletier, in association with John Claflin, of the H. B. Claflin Company, New York city, formed the Pelletier Dry Goods Company, of which he became president. In 1904 the store was entirely destroyed by fire and, Mr. Claflin withdrawing from the firm, Mr. Pelletier founded the present Pelletier Company, which has since handled the business. The Pelletier store has thus served Sioux City and contiguous territory for forty-five years, excepting the interruption at the time of the fire. From a small dry goods store, the business through the years has grown in scope and volume, until today it is one of the largest department stores in the state of Iowa. Over four hundred and fifty people are employed in the store, which contains practically every line of merchandise, each department being a store within a store, the home furnishing department alone covering sixty-one thousand feet of floor space. The Pelletier Company covers a trade territory that would do justice to many wholesale houses. They receive mail orders almost daily from as far west as the Black Hills, while to the south they go fifty miles, north one hundred and fifty miles and east one hundred miles. Besides Mr. Pelletier, who is president, the other officers are, W. J. Hayward, vicepresident, and H. F. Norris, secretary and treasurer. In 1915 Mr. Pelletier was asked by a New York city bank to go to Topeka, Kansas, and look over the store of the Mills Dry Goods Company, of which the bank was a heavy creditor. This firm had but recently erected a new and modern store building, seven stories high and one hundred by one hundred and fifty feet in size, being one of the group of modern structures comprising the Capitol section. Mr. Pelletier made favorable report on the business and the bank was willing to continue but Mr. Mills found himself unable to raise necessary funds and Mr. Pelletier was then asked to take over the business, which he did and has since continued it under the firm name of The Pelletier Stores Company, which is operating the best equipped and most modern department store in the state of Kansas. The addition of the second store has given Mr. Pelletier stronger buying power in the world's markets, the company maintaining unusually strong buying connections in New York and Paris. Mr.Pelletier is a director and vice-president of the Iowa Joint Stock Land Bank, is a direction and vice-president of the Farmers Loan and Trust Company, a director and vice-president of the Toy National Bank, director of the Terminal Grain Corporation, and president of the War Eagle Corporation, which owns the War Eagle building, as well as other valuable real estate holdings. In 1886 Mr. Pelletier was married to Miss Mary Oliver, daughter of Judge Addison Oliver, of Onawa, Iowa, and to this union have been born three daughters, namely: Helen, the wife of J. B. Walker, who is vice-president an manager of the Pelletier Stores Company, of Topeka, Kansas; Joanna, who is the wife of H. F. Norris, secretary and treasurer of the Pettetier Company, of Sioux City; and Mary Addison, who was graduated in 1924 from Mt. Vernon Seminary, at Washington, D. C. Fraternally Mr. Pelletier is a member of Landmarks Lodge, No. 103, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons; Sioux City Consistory No. 5, Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite; Abu-Bekr Temple, Ancient Arabic Order of Nobles of the Mystic Shrine; Sioux City Lodge No. 112, Benevolent Protective Order of Elks, and he also belongs to the Sioux City Country Club, the Sioux City Boat Club, the Knife and Fork Club and the Morningside Country Club. He is a director and vice-president of the Bureau of Social Agencies, which takes care of Sioux City's various charities, and is an active member of the Sioux City Chamber of Commerce and the Traffic Club. He is a member of the board of trustees of Morningside College and takes a keen interest in everything pertaining to the material, civic, religious or moral welfare of the community. He is a member of the Presbyterian church and has served on its board of trustees for the past twenty-five years. Always calm and dignified, never demonstrative, his life has been a persistent plea for right principles and wholesome character. Distinctly a man of affairs, he has long filled a conspicuous place in the public eye, and no man in this community holds a higher place in the esteem of all who have in any way been associated with him. Debbie Clough Gerischer Iowa Gen Web, Assistant CC, Scott County http://www.celticcousins.net/scott/ IAGENWEB: Special History Project: http://iagenweb.org/history/index.htm Gerischer Family Web Site: http://gerischer.rootsweb.com/