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Pettigrew House and Museum
Richard Franklin Pettigrew was the first Senator from South Dakota
after it became a state, and also a surveyor and land developer in
the city of Sioux Falls. He was born in Ludlow, Vermont and
moved to Wisconsin in 1854, with his family. Studying law in
Iowa, he joined the law department of the University of
Wisconsin-Madison in 1867, then moved to Dakota in 1869, working
with the U.S. deputy surveyor. Richard finally settled in
Sioux Falls, started a law practice, continued surveying and buying
real estate. He was elected to the Territorial Council in
1881, as a Republican and went to the U.S. House of Representatives
in the same year. Unable to be re-elected, he returned to the
council and was there until 1889. When the territory became a
state, he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1889, and remained one
until 1900. After he left the senate, he went to New York City
to practice law, but went back to Sioux Falls and was busy with
politics and business until he passed away in 1926. Richard
left his home to the city, which it still maintains today and the
museum is used to show how people in his position lived at the turn
of the century. The home contains many antiques of that era,
plus many of Pettigrew's personal artifacts that he collected.
He was an amateur archaeologist and much of his personal collection
reflects that area. Some of his quote's include; "capital is
stolen labor and its only function is to steal more labor"; "under
the ethics of his profession the lawyer is the only man who can take
a bribe and call it a fee"; the sum and substance of the conquest of
the Philippines is to find a field where cheap labor can be secured,
labor that does not strike, that does not belong to a union, that
does not need an army to keep it in leading strings, that will make
goods for the trusts of this country".
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