Francis R. Delano

Francis R. Delano.

Francis Ralph Delano (September 6, 1842 – April 6, 1892) was an American banker and a member of the prominent Delano family.

He is sometimes confused with an older relative, Francis Roach Delano of Massachusetts, who was the first warden of the Minnesota Territorial Prison (1853–1858), first General Superintendent of the St. Paul & Pacific Railway,^[1] and namesake of what is now the city of Delano in Wright County, Minnesota.

Early life and education

Born in Lockport, New York, Francis Delano studied at Kimball Union Academy (in Meriden, New Hampshire), Dartmouth College and Hobart College before graduating from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut in 1865.

Career

Almanac of the Merchants' Gargling Oil Company, 1886

Choosing a career in law, Delano attended Harvard Law School and received a degree in 1868 after which he was admitted to the bar of Massachusetts. In 1870, he moved to Niagara Falls, New York where he entered the banking business. There, he met and married Elizabeth Grant, with whom he had a daughter.

Banking interests

Francis Delano acquired a one-third interest in the Cataract Bank in Niagara Falls and in 1883 was made President of the bank. His success in banking led to sizable investments in numerous other companies, becoming a director of the International Hotel Company and President of the Merchants' Gargling Oil Company of Lockport, New York. In Niagara Falls, he was Treasurer of the Pettebone Paper Company, the Niagara Falls Brewing Company, and the Niagara Falls Water-Works Company.

Francis R. Delano died at the age of forty-nine in 1892 in Jacksonville, Florida.

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