I found this cardboard in the Sutter Drug Store scrapbook that my great-aunt Ursula Sutter Schuetze compiled. The little newspaper clipping is the only printed reference we have to the first store, which was located at 311 N. Third in the Tama Building. (Although Joseph bought the store in 1902, he did not officially open it as Sutter Drug until 1903.)
The photo is of the interior of the first store. Notice how all the merchandise was behind glass doors or in cases, so the clerks had to get it out for the customer. Shopping wasn’t self-service like it is today!
Aunt Ursie was the youngest of four children that my great-grandfather Joseph Robert Sutter and his wife, Anna Schlacter Sutter, had. Being the youngest and the last to leave home, she was probably considered “the baby of the family.” Neither of her parents ever drove and so she drove them around in the car my great-grandfather owned. I recall her telling me that when she was about 18 years old, she drove herself and her mother all the way from Burlington, Iowa, to Boise, Idaho, so they could visit Gertrude Sutter Moore, the elder daughter. That would have been around 1923! I remember being amazed by that story. It probably took them at least a week to get there, given the roads and slower speeds of cars. My great-grandfather must have had a lot of confidence in his wife and daughter to let them take such a long trip by themselves.
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