Frank D Stout

• American

Frank Deming Stout was the second son of Henry Lane Stout and Eviline Deming Stout of Dubuque, Iowa. Henry L Stout was a founder and partner in Knapp, Stout and Company, headquartered in Menominee, Wisconsin, where he resided. Frank's older brother, James H Stout, chose to spend his working life in the Knapp, Stout and Company lumber operations, becoming one of the leading citizens of Menomonie in 1888 where he started the manual training school which became the University of Wisconsin at Stout. Frank Stout was born in Dubuque on March 27, 1854 (Forrester 1891-92:406-407). He married Clara Wale of Dubuque in 1888.

Frank L Stout lived in Chicago most of his working life with a permanent home at 3150 Lake Shore Drive. According to his 1927 obituary in the Chicago Daily News, he was considered one of that city's ten wealthiest men, a financier and banker, who, at his death was chief executive of the C and 0 Lumber Company; director of the Illinois Merchants' Trust Company; and president of the Missouri Southern railroad. "He was a member of the Chicago club, the Chicago Athletic association and the Press club" (10/12/27, p 3 in Wisconsin Necrology, vol 25). He died on his way to the Island of Happy Days, his summer home, on October 11, 1927. According to the Rice Lake Chronotype, Frank D Stout was also a director of the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad; a director in the Texas Corporation, an oil firm; and held directorates in the Drake and Blackstone hotels in Chicago and three lumber companies on the Pacific coast (in Wisconsin Necrology Vol 25:28). The basis of his wealth came from the family's timber holdings in northwestern Wisconsin which dated from the mid-1850s.

Knapp, Stout and Company first looked over the Barren County pineries in 1858, at which time there was a large Indian (possibly Ojibwa) village at the present city of Rice Lake where wild rice was gathered and where fowl were attracted to the rice. In 1868, the lumber company established a logging camp south of Red Cedar River where the town sits today. The company established a mill in 1871 and eventually had vast lumber holdings in the region. Eventually Knapp, Stout and Company had 25 lumber camps with headquarters at Rice Lake (Curtiss-Wedge 1922:1058,1059). In August 1903, Knapp, Stout and Co disposed of all its interests in Barren County to the Wisconsin Power Company, but Frank D Stout retained considerable property around Red Cedar Lake, including what became his summer home on the island and two well-stocked dairy farms named Lone Pine and Cedar Lake (Curtiss-Wedge 1922:62). - NRHP, 1 January 1995

Lineage

• Father Henry Lane Stout

• Brother: James H Stout