Damose Raymond, born in 1857 in St. Michel, Canada, was a successful farmer and stock grower in Charles Mix County, South Dakota. After early work in Canada and four years in Michigan’s lumber industry, he returned to Canada before settling in the U.S. He operated a meat market in St. Philippe for five years, then farmed in Nebraska before homesteading in Jackson Township, South Dakota. Starting with a sod house, Raymond built a thriving ranch focusing on red polled cattle and Poland China hogs. Widowed after the death of his first wife, Olivine Brindamour, in 1899, he remarried Zelia Cote in 1900.
Damose Raymond, one of the substantial and prosperous farmers and stock growers of Charles Mix County, comes of staunch French lineage, and is a native of St. Michel, Canada, where he was born in the year 1857, his parents having passed their entire lives in the dominion. He secured a common-school education and early became dependent upon his own resources, having been engaged in various lines of work in Canada until he had attained the age of sixteen years, when he went to the northern part of the state of Michigan, where he remained four years as a workman in the great pineries, in connection with the lumbering operations of a large concern. He then returned to Canada and located in St. Philippe, where he conducted a meat market for the ensuing five years, at the expiration of which he again came to “the states,” taking up his abode in Fremont, Nebraska, where he rented a farm of one hundred and fifty-seven acres, to whose cultivation he continued to devote his attention for three years. He then came to South Dakota and took up a homestead claim in Jackson Township, Charles Mix County, the same being an integral portion of his present finely improved ranch. He began life here in the primitive pioneer style, his first dwelling being a rude sod house, which in time gave place to his present comfortable and commodious frame residence, while he has made other well-ordered improvements on the place. A major part of the place is under a high state of cultivation, while the balance is devoted principally to grazing purposes and to the raising of hay for his stock. He gives special attention to the raising of red polled cattle of high grade and also keeps a good herd of Poland China hogs. In politics he maintains an independent attitude, and both he and his wife are communicants of the Catholic church, in whose faith he was reared.
In the year 1877 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Raymond to Miss Olivine Brindamour, who was born in 1862 in St. Philippe, and of this union were born the following children: Millen, Mary, Rosa, William, Casimir, Damase, Josephine, Victoria, and Florence. Mrs. Olivine Raymond died in 1899, and in 1900 the subject married Miss Zelia Cote.
Source: Robinson, Doane, History of South Dakota: together with mention of Citizens of South Dakota, [Logansport? IN] : B. F. Bowen, 1904.