Peterson, Samuel J. died 1924

PETERSON, GILBERT, RAMAGE

Posted By: Reid R. Johnson (email)
Date: 6/9/2017 at 13:10:44

Elkader Register, Thur., 17 Jan. 1924. From the Dubuque Telegraph Herald, undated.

One of the leading merchants of Iowa in the early days was Samuel J. Peterson, who died Sunday at the age of 86 at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Barry Gilbert, in Evanston, Illinois, was brought to McGregor for burial.

He founded at McGregor, with his brother-in-law, Joseph Ramage, the largest wholesale drug house in northeastern Iowa, and on the death of Mr. Ramage in 1876 became the sole proprietor of it, continuing in business until 1911, when he sold to the present owner, C. F. Cramer. He wholesaled drugs and oils through northern Iowa, southern Minnesota and into the Dakotas, accumulating a fortune.

Mr. Peterson was but a boy in his early teens when he came from Sweden to Calmar, Iowa, in the early fifties. Not long after his arrival he received a letter from Benton, Hoffman & company, wholesale druggists and grocers at McGregor, offering him a job provided he reported for duty the next day. Young Samuel packed his grip and walked the forty-three miles to McGregor arriving in time. "I passed many loaded wagons, most of them drawn by oxen on their way to McGregor to sell their wheat," Mr. Peterson said in later years, in telling of his journey on foot to seek his fortune. "One of the teamsters, a big Scandinavian, told me he lived near Albert Lea, Minn., and that on his return trip he was to carry goods for a merchant in Albert Lea. McGregor at that time was the only market where farmers of northeastern Iowa and southern Minnesota could dispose of their produce for spot cash unless they went to Dubuque or La Crosse."

Mr. Peterson for years was a large buyer of hogs as a side line to his merchandise business. Of the big hog days he used to say, "It was a great right to see nothing but hogs, all dressed, always clean and shining, frozen hard as rock, hundreds and hundreds of loads every day. They were bought at McGregor and then sent over on the ice to the railroad company at Prairie du Chien. Often the railroad company would send word to us to buy no more hogs, saying they could not take care of them as they piled by the thousands on the open prairie with no cars to load them on. At such times enormous numbers would accumulate at McGregor. There was no place to store them, so they were stacked up like cordwood, on the square, vacant lots, sidewalks and everywhere. A string of wagons reaching from the levee back nearly two miles often would be standing in line waiting their turn at the public scales. Many farmers had to remain in McGregor a day or two before they could sell. If they left the line they were obliged to go back to the end and start in again."

In his long influential life in McGregor (next newspaper line missing) to the old town, that though in late years he has made his home in California, he has come back to McGregor each year to spend the summer.- Telegraph Herald.