Will A. Beach Biography


	This biography appears on pages 713-714 in "History of Dakota Territory" 
	by George W. Kingsbury, Vol. IV (1915) and was scanned, 
	OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net.

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				WILL A. BEACH.

	The position which Will A. Beach, president of the Will A. Beach 
Printing Company, has obtained among the prominent and representative 
men of Sioux Falls is a visible evidence of the value of industry, 
ability and business insight in the development of a successful career. 
Starting in a small way, he has built up by his efforts one of the 
largest blank book and general office supply concerns in this state and 
because of his able and intelligent management of his interests is 
meeting with constantly increasing prosperity. He was born on a farm in 
Sullivan county, Pennsylvania, May 2, 1862, and is a son of George H. 
and Mary E. (Black) Beach, the former a native of Staffordshire, 
England. He came to America with his parents in boyhood and died in 
Emmetsburg, Iowa, in 1911. He had located there in 1872, and during the 
later years of his residence was a building contractor.  

	Will A. Beach acquired his education in the public schools of Des 
Moines and of Palo Alto county, Iowa, and in a business college at 
Milwaukee, graduating from the latter institution in 1881. Two years 
later he located in Sioux Falls and entered the employ of F. W. Taylor 
as bookkeeper in his hardware establishment. At the end of five years 
he formed a partnership with a Mr. Sutton under the firm name of Sutton 
& Beach and established a small job printing office which was the 
nucleus of his present large enterprise. Soon afterward he bought out 
the interest of Mr. Sutton and continued the business under the name of 
Will A. Beach, printer and binder, until 1905, when it was organized 
into the Will A. Beach Printing Company, with Will A. Beach, president; 
A. H. Beach, vice president; J. D. Beach, treasurer: and W. G. George 
secretary. In 1907 Charles H. Parshall, the present secretary and 
superintendent purchased the interest of W. G. George in the business.  

	The Will A. Beach Printing Company has had a rapid and steady 
growth since its organization and it controls today one of the largest 
and best equipped printing, binding, stationery and office supply 
establishments in the northwest. It is state agent for numerous office 
devices, among them the Herring-Hall-NIarvin line of safes and vault 
doors, the Safe Cabinet Company's fireproof safe cabinets, the Elliott-
Fisher book typewriter, the Yawman & Erbe line of steel vault fixtures, 
and the Yawman & Erbe and the Weis lines of wood filing devices. The 
company has a large and increasing business in all of these lines. When 
the business was started the equipment consisted of two job presses 
without any power attachments, whereas there are now in the press room 
five job presses, four cylinders and one auto press, with electric 
motor equipment, in the composing room one of the latest model linotype 
type-setting machines and full equipment of the very best job fonts. 
The binding department, which has been under the supervision of J. W. 
Olson since its beginning, is fully equipped with all of the most 
improved machinery in the binding line, consisting of two ruling 
machines, power cutters, rotary perforators, electric punching 
machines, a folding machine and everything contained in the modern, up-
to-date eastern binderies. The blank book and office-supply department 
recently installed by the Will A Beach Printing Company is one of the 
finest in this part of the state and no other city of the size of Sioux 
Falls contains so well equipped an establishment. The firm gives 
employment to from thirty-five to fifty people according to the seasons 
of the year, the payroll being in 1914 over thirty-five thousand 
dollars. They have a large and modern plant equipped with everything 
necessary to supply the demands of an extensive and increasing business 
and the outside territory is taken care of by three traveling salesmen, 
covering all of the state of South Dakota, eastern Wyoming and Montana, 
parts of North Dakota, southwestern Minnesota and northwestern Iowa. In 
the mail order department the company counts its customers from ail 
parts of the northwest.

	At Canton, South Dakota, November 6, 1883, Mr. Beach was united 
in marriage to Miss Lida Alice Barber and they have two daughters, 
Hazel M. and Maude Barbara. Mr. Beach is a member of the Episcopal 
church and gives his political allegiance to the republican party. He 
is a thirty-second degree Mason, holding membership in the Commandery 
and Shrine, belongs to the Knights of Pythias and has been through all 
of the chairs in the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, being past chief 
patriarch of the encampment. He is past chancellor of Granite Lodge, 
No. 18, K. P., and past exalted ruler of Sioux Falls Lodge, No. 262, B. 
P. O. E. He is recognized as one of the prominent and able business men 
of Sioux Falls, a position which he has earned by many years of rightly 
directed effort.