Marcus E. Palmer Biography


	This biography appears on pages 550-551 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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				MARCUS E. PALMER. 

	The leaders are comparatively few. The great mates of men are 
content to remain in the paths where circumstances seem to place them, 
lacking in the ambition or the initiative to strike out for themselves 
and develop new enterprises or plan new projects. Marcus E. Palmer, 
however, does not belong to that class. He is justly accounted one of 
the representative business men of Sioux Falls, being vice president of 
the Loonan Lumber Company, owning and controlling a chain of lumber and 
coal yards in this and adjoining states. In connection with the 
business he manifests a spirit of unfaltering enterprise and 
progressiveness that has constituted an important feature in its growth 
and development. His life record had its beginning at Delta, Ohio, on 
the 24th of June, 1871, his parents being Christopher and Sarah 
(Grimes) Palmer. The father, who was a native of Pennsylvania, served 
as a soldier of the Civil war, enlisting on the 20th of February, 1865, 
as a private of Company K, One Hundred and Eighty-fifth Ohio Volunteer 
Infantry, from which command he was honorably discharged eight months 
later.

	In the schools of his native town Marcus E. Palmer pursued his 
early education, which was supplemented by study in the Wauseon (Ohio) 
Normal School. He was a young man of nineteen years when, in May, 1890, 
he came to this state, settling first at Blunt, where he entered the 
office of the Blunt Advocate, a weekly paper. There he learned the 
printer's trade, spending two years in that connection. He afterward 
went to Canton, South Dakota, where he was employed at his trade for a 
year, and then removed to Hudson, South Dakota, where he purchased the 
Hudson Tribune, a weekly paper, which he published for two years. He 
next entered the lumber business in connection with Hubert Loonan at 
Hudson in the year 1895. Mr. Loonan had been connected with the lumber 
trade since 1888. In 1898 they disposed of their interests at Hudson 
and removed to Garretson, South Dakota, and in 1901 incorporated the 
business under the name of the Loonan Lumber Company, with a capital of 
two hundred thousand dollars. In 1902 the headquarters were established 
at Sioux Falls, but something of the extent and volume of the business 
is indicated in the feet that they have branches at Yankton, Garretson 
and Sherman, South Dakota; Jasper, Minnesota; Sioux City, Iowa; and 
Hartington and Madison, Nebraska. The present officers of the company 
are: H. Loonan, president; M. E. Palmer, vice president; and J. W. 
Smith, of Sioux City, Iowa, secretary. The Loonan Lumber Company takes 
great pride in its well equipped yards and storage warehouses for the 
care of their very large stock of lumber, coal, paints, oils, woven 
wire fencing and all kinds of building material. They keep on hand a 
large stock and have been accorded a most liberal patronage in 
recognition of their reliable business methods and their 
progressiveness. Their field is a wide one and the volume of their 
trade is constantly increasing as the result of methods which neither 
seek nor require disguise. 

	On the 27th of June, 1904, at Hudson, South Dakota, Mr. Palmer 
was united in marriage to Miss Florence Farley, and they now have one 
son, Farley. In religious faith they are Episcopalians and in political 
belief Mr. Palmer is a republican. He belongs to the Dacotah and the 
Country Clubs and is well known socially as well as commercially. He 
belongs to that class of self-made men who owe their advancement 
entirely to their own efforts. Early in his career he realized the feet 
that industry, trustworthiness and enterprise are the concomitants 
which insure success and in the employment of those qualities he has 
made for himself the creditable position which he today occupies.