Mason County, West Virginia         Biography of FRANK L. EVANS

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The History of West Virginia, Old and New
Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc.,
Chicago and New York, Volume III,
pg. 449
Mason

FRANK L. EVANS is one of those loyal, liberal and pub-
lic-spirited citizens whose value in a community is not
easily to be overestimated, and the vital little port city
of Point Pleasant, Mason County, claims him as one of its
representative citizens and men of affairs, he here being
president of the Point Pleasant Grocery Company, which
was organized in 1906 and which was incorporated with a
capital of $150,000. In 1921 was effected a reorganization
of the company, which now bases its extensive operations on
a capital stock of $300,000. In January, 1922, the com-
pany completed its large and modern building, at the cor-
ner of Eleventh and Viand streets, and the scope and im-
portance of the substantial wholesale business of the con-
cern were materially augmented by the purchase of the
property and business of the Enterprise Grocery Company
on the 2nd of January, 1922, for a consideration of ap-
proximately $125,000. From an article that appeared in
the Point Pleasant Daily Register of January 7, 1922, are
taken the following extracts:

"The Point Pleasant Grocery Company has just com-
pleted one of the finest and best equipped wholesale-grocery
buildings in the state, located at Eleventh and Viand streets,
on the main line of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. The
building has been designed with special reference to the
most economical handling of goods, and an immense amount
of stock can be handled with convenience and dispatch.
The company owns the fine flouring mill and wheat elevator
formerly owned by the Equity Milling Company, and these
will be operated in connection with its wholesale grocery
business. We congratulate the community on this evidence
of business enterprise, and also the Point Pleasant Grocery
Company upon the fruition of their well matured plans."

Mr. Evans is president and general manager of this im-
portant commercial and industrial corporation, which lends
special prestige to Point Pleasant as a distributing center,
John J. Dower being vice president and treasurer of the
company, C. K. Blackwood, its secretary, and the directorate
including also J. S. Spencer and P. B. Buxton. The flour
mill owned by the company is a substantial four-story build-
ing with thoroughly modern equipment and facilities and
with a daily capacity for the output of 100 barrels of flour,
the grain elevator having a capacity of 21,000 bushels.

Mr. Evans, who maintains his home in the City of Park-
ersburg, was born in Gilmer County, West Virginia, and was
a lad of sixteen years at the time of the family removal to
Parkersburg. There he was for eighteen years associated
with the wholesale grocery house of the Shattuck & Jackson
Company, for which he was a salesman for ten years and
thereafter general manager, a position from which he re-
tired, later taking and maintaining a position with The
Scudden-Gale Grocery Company of St. Louis, Missouri, as
manager of the fancy canned goods sales department for
several years. He resigned this position to return to his
former home in Parkersburg, where he organized the Union
Merchandise Company, in the same line of business, of
which he became general manager and for which he built
up a large and substantial business. His record of splen-
did achievement has been continued in his association with
the Point Pleasant Grocery Company, which now retains
live traveling salesmen, the employes in the wholesale house
being twenty in number. A man who crystallizes into ac-
tion his progressive ideas, Mr. Evans has become one of
the leading representatives of the wholesale grocery trade
in West Virginia, and is consistently to be classed among
the representative "captains of industry" in his native
state.