Page:Autobiographies and portraits of the President, cabinet, Supreme court, and Fifty-fifth Congress (IA autobiographiesp02neal).pdf/201

 RICHARD FRANKLIN PETTIGREW

, of Sioux Falls, was born at Ludlow, Vt., July, 1848; removed with his parents to Evansville, Rock County Wis., in 1854; was prepared for college at the Evansville Academy and entered Beloit College in 1866, where he remained two years; was a member of the law class of 1870, University of Wisconsin; went to Dakota in July, 1869, in the employ of a United States deputy surveyor, as a laborer; located in Sioux Falls, where he engaged in the surveying and real estate business; opened a law office in 1872, and has been in the practice of his profession since; was elected to the Dakota legislature as a member of the council in 1877, and reëlected in 1879; was elected to the Forty-Seventh Congress as delegate from Dakota Territory; was elected to the Territorial council of 1884–85; was a member of the South Dakota constitutional convention of 1883; was chairman of the committee on public indebtedness, and framed the present provisions of the constitution on that subject; was elected United States Senator October 16, 1889, under the provisions of the act of Congress admitting South Dakota into the Union; took his seat December 2, 1889; was reëlected in 1895. His term of service will expire March 3, 1901.