Bill of Exchange Fragments: Grain Merchants -- Hammond & Snyder of Baltimore

 Bill of Exchange fragment for the firm of Hammond & Snyder:

HAMMOND & SNYDER

JUN

27

1900

BALTIMORE

Hammond & Snyder were grain exporters and receivers.  William R. Hammond and John W. Snyder were the partners.

Available in wikimedia commons, The American Elevator and Grain Trade, with its fabulous title art, is a great resource for sorting through the grain firms of the 1898 tax period.  Hammond & Snyder don't show up much, but they do, and just enough to confirm the nature of their business.

Bill of Exchange Fragments: Fleitmann & Company, Commission Merchants

Today begins a series of document fragments, mostly bill of exchange fragments that came from a large lot acquired from the U. K.  I'm assuming that all of them are fragments of bills of exchange, as most that I can decipher seem to be.  You can find similar fragments to some of those posted at the Revenue-Collector site.  

The New York-based commission merchant firm of Fleitmann & Company starts the series:

Reverse side of document fragment:

Front side of document fragment:

Advertisement, Dun's Review, January 1901 

Printed Cancels by the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range Railroad?

A corresponding collector in Minnesota sent me examples of cancellations, possibly printed, by the Duluth, Missabe, & Iron Range Railroad, a railroad organized to transport iron ore and eventually taconite out of the Minnesota iron range to port facilities on Lake Superior at Duluth, Minnesota.  I was immediately interested in these, as examples of these cancels don't appear in Richard Fullerton's catalog, and the DM&IRR was not a part of any of the families of railroads known to use printed cancels.  

At first glance the cancels on the three stamps collectively make it appear that we could have printed cancels, as the cancels are all roughly in the same place on the stamps.  But with a bit of scrutiny it seemed that the cancels might even be complete fakes.  First, it seems likely they were not printed, as the cancels appear at differing angles on each stamp.  Second, the stamps indicate no sign of legitimate use, with dates or handstamps or normal manuscript cancelling.  Third, the ink has run and blurred across all the stamps.  The AMEX printed cancels show this blurred quality for stamps cancelled with older plates, but there is no evidence anywhere that the DM&IRRR cancelled enough stamps to wear out their cancelling devices.  

It appears to me that the maker of the cancels used a pile of cheap stamps - a 1c stamp, a pencil canceled 2c with a slight tear, and 25c with cut cancels, to add handstamp cancels.

It appears that at best we have philatelic mischief, or at worst fraud, committed sometime after 1937.

A little research showed that the DM&IRR was organized and so named in 1937, 35 years after the 1898 tax period expired.  On July 1, 1937, the Duluth, Missabe and Northern Ry (DM&N) and the Spirit Lake Transfer Railway were merged to form the Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway.  There is a reference called “History of the Missabe” published by the Missabe Railroad Historical Society that goes into this merger and the creation of the DM&IRR.

To cross check it, I went to a contemporaneous reference, the Poor’s Manual of Railroads (image below) from 1901, that lists all US Class I, II, III railroads.  There is no DM&IRR in the manual, but there are the Duluth & Iron Range RR, and the Duluth, Missabe & Northern Ry.

The mischief maker didn’t even bother to create fake cancels for a real, existing railroad during the time of the 1898 tax period.  At least we know that the fakes were made after 1937.  But that’s about all.  Whatever the case, these are an interesting philatelic story.  The collector that sent these stamps to me reported that he had seen a stamp with these cancels sold in an auction a few years ago.  While he did not win that auction lot, he did buy examples of these cancels from a collection located in Walnut Grove, Minnesota sometime in the last few years.  Buyer beware!

New York Stock Brokers: William Salomon & Company

William Salomon was born in Mobile, Alabama before the Civil War.  He found his way to New York where he would eventually establish a brokerage house with one of Wall Street's best known names.  He began in the brokerage business with Speyer & Company, but would open his own shop in early 1902.

WILLIAM SALOMON & CO.

JUN

13

1902

NEW YORK.

Document fragment for taxes of $2.44.

Chicago Board of Trade Members: Armour & Company

ARMOUR & CO.

JUL

16

1901

CHICAGO.

Langlois scans

October 5, 1900

July 30, 1898

blue cancel

September 30, 1898

purple cancel

August 28, 1899

green cancel

June 30, 1899

Ouch! Ouch! A Deed Taxed Twice!

I like documents that bear combination usages; the more stamps the better! This one came in a job lot of stamped deeds purchased on eBay and actually it wasn't the main reason I bought the lot.  Happily though, it was included as it demonstrates a fine point about the 1898 tax law.

$400 Deed for Property in Deer Lodge, Montana

May 8, 1899 



It wasn't until I was sorting through the lot that I noticed that this deed seemed to be taxed incorrectly.  As I've explained in prior blogs, the tax on conveyances was 50 cents for property valued from $100 to $500, and 50 cents for each additional $500 in value.  As this deed bore a total of $1.00 in tax stamps one would have expected the property being conveyed to have a value of between $500 and $1, 000, but instead the sale price was just $400.   At $400 it should only have been taxed 50 cents, not $1.00.

Hmmm!  That incongruity made me look more closely at both the deed and the stamps.  I noticed almost immediately that the upper two R169 25 cent battleships were a joined pair with the bottom single 25 cent stamp slightly overlapping them.  And the twelve R164 2 cent stamps plus the 1-cent I.R. overprint issue add up to another 25 cents.

$1.00 tax paid by

three 25-cent, twelve 2-cent, and one 1-cent stamps

all initialed 

8/99

K H

After reading the deed, it all began to make sense.  One Kate Hartlee is selling two lots in Deer Lodge Montana to C.G. Glass and J.H. Meyers.  I'll skip the boilerplate and go straight to the description:

    "Lots numbered nineteen (19) and twenty (20) in Block numbered twenty (20) of the original townsite of Deer Lodge Montana according to the official plat and survey on file in the office of Clerk and Recorder of said Deer Lodge County, Montana.

      It is understood by and between the parties to this instrument and deed, that the grantor hereby conveys unto each of said grantees an undivided one-half interest (my emphasis) in and to the said Lots 19 & 20 in Block 20 in the town and county of Deer Lodge Montana."

I can almost hear the justice of the peace before whom Kate Hartlee appeared to both sign and affirm the document: 

"...Ah, well, hmmm, you know Kate , the way you have written up this here deed you've got two separate transactions going on and...well...ah... I think to be completely legal we have to tax each of them as separate transactions"    

I may have unfairly put words in the mouth of the JP, but all of this does serve to illustrates the fine point that the documentary War Taxes were not levied against actual documents, but rather the transactions represented by or within those documents.  While there was but one deed, it represented two separate conveyances, each of which was subject to tax.  And the appropriate tax for two sales of property at $200 each would have been $1.00.

Back to the stamps.  I'm guessing the pair of 25-cent R169 battleships originally was affixed with the expectation that only 50 cents was going to be required, but when it instead was discovered that an additional 50 cents was required, and only one additional 25 cent stamp was at hand the parties scrounged up more commonly available 2 cent and 1 cent stamps to pay the remaining balance due.  Regardless of exactly how it all came about, it's an interesting document and a welcome addition to my collection.                  

A. B. Parmelee & Son, Malone, New York

Back in May, 2010, I posted the copy of R184 below with the "A. B. P. & Son" cancel, listing the initials as unknown.  The mystery was solved a few weeks later when a comment was placed by the Historian of Franklin County, New York -- more below.  In the years since May 2010, Bart Rosenberg sent in the scan of the 25c battleship with an A. B. P. & Son cancel.  So here is a reprise of the copy of R184 with Bart's stamp, and the comments of the Franklin County Historian:

A. B. P. & Son.,

NOV

18

1898

Malone, N. Y.

Bart Rosenberg scan

A. B. P. & Son.,

MAY

1

1901

Malone,  N. Y.

Langlois scan

"I think the "A.B.P. & Son" is A.B. Parmelee & Son, a business operating in Franklin County, NY at that time. A.B. Parmelee was the son of pioneer preacher Rev. Ashbel Parmelee, who was the first settled clergy in Franklin County and the founding pastor of First Congregational Church of Malone. A.B. Parmelee and his son Morton S. Parmelee ran logging and lumbering operations, mills, and engaged in land parceling and development. A.B. Parmelee was the uncle of U.S. Congressman Ashbel Parmelee Fitch.


Anne Werley Smallman
Executive Director
Franklin County Historical & Museum Society
Malone, NY

Reverend Ashbel Parmelee

The Rev. Ashbel Parmelee was the leading abolitionist in Malone. He was the pastor of the First Congregational Church, a documented site on the New York Underground Railroad Heritage Trail, where anti-slavery meetings were held and where it is believed fugitive slaves were secreted in the basement.  From the website of the North Country Underground Railroad Historical Association.

A Warehouse Receipt from the San Francisco Bay Area

I thought I'd followup my blog about an ocean passage ticket from San Francisco with one about a Bay Area warehouse receipt. 

The War Revenue Law of 1898 placed a twenty-five cent tax on "Warehouse receipt(s) for any goods, merchandise, or property of any kind held on storage in any public or private warehouse or yard, except receipts of agricultural products deposited by the actual grower thereof in the regular course of trade for sale."

Most of the warehouse receipts I've seen have been for the storage of whiskey or other spirits in a bonded warehouse.  In fact, this Port Costa Warehouse and Dock Company receipt for the storage of wheat is the only non-alcohol related receipt I have seen.  It's an over-sized document measuring 16" x 6 1/2" including the stub to which it had been repasted.  The image below showing the receipt fully detached from the stub is a paste-up of two scans.

Port Costa Warehouse and Dock Company Storage Receipt #3577

8,372 Bags of Wheat Weighing 1,098,871 Pounds

San Francisco, October 19, 1898

As docketed on the back of the receipt, the wheat was stored in three separate warehouse locations:

•  2/468  330,783 lbs (2459 sks)
•  2/52    399,377 lbs (3063 sks)
•  1/52    368,711 lbs (2850 sks)
•          1,098,871 lbs (8372 sks)

It's written out on the front as: "Ten hundred ninety-eight thousand, eight hundred seventy-one pounds of wheat."  That's a lot of wheat, although according to one source the Port Costa Warehouses were capable of holding 60,000 tons (120,000,000 pounds) of grain.  So this deposit of wheat took up less than one percent of the warehouse's capacity.

View of Property of the Port Costa Warehouse and Dock Company

Probably from an earlier time the somewhat idyllic view above mostly shows rigged vessels rather than the steamships that likely filled the Port Costa harbor by 1898. 

All that remains today are the pilings that supported the

Port Costa Warehouse and Dock

 photo by walkersplanet from the panoramio website

  

detail of 25-cent R169 stamp

purple undated cancel reads:

G. W. McNEAR.

G. W. McNear, Sr.

G.(eoge) W(ashington) McNear was born in 1837 in Maine to seafaring stock.  By the time he died in 1909 he was known as the "Grain King of California."  

As a teen he left Maine for New Orleans and by age eighteen was the master of a sailing vessel and for six years commanded packets which plied in Mississippi Sound.  After a few years' residence in New Orleans he returned to Maine and then came to California arriving at San Francisco, August 2, 1860. 

He became a partner of his brother, John A. McNear, in a grain business in Petaluma.  By the 1870s he had established his own grain business in San Francisco and by incorporating his knowledge of both shipping and grain became the largest exporter of grain in California for more than twenty-five years. At one time he was the owner of more than one thousand acres of wheat land in various parts of the state, while his warehouses at Port Costa were capable of holding sixty thousand tons of golden grain. 

To read more of his biography from The History of San Francisco, California click here.

By the time this receipt was issued, the warehouse business was being managed by G. W. McNear, Jr. whose signature it bears.  The grain depositor is listed as Eppinger & Co., another grain export company.  The Eppinger firm later experienced financial difficulties and filed for bankruptcy in 1903.  Eventually its principals, Herman and Jacob Eppinger, were indicted for fraud.  Apparently they avoided conviction when evidence against them was destroyed by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.   

Port Costa was founded in 1879 as a landing for the railroad ferry Solano, owned and operated by the Central Pacific Railroad.  McNear took advantage of the locale by buying property and building a 20,000 foot dock and warehouse operation that allowed him to load up to 10 ships at a time literally directly from grain cars.  He also laid out and developed the town of Port Costa.  Packed with both stevedores and railroad men it must have been a wild place in the late 1800s. 

Today the wheat ships and train ferries are gone, but Port Costa remains a popular tourist destination.   Today, McNear's Port Costa headquarters building, built in 1897, is home to a trendy restaurant, the Bull Valley Roadhouse.         



Chicago Board of Trade Members: George A. Seaverns Sr. & Jr.

G.  A.  S.

JUL   29   1898

G.  A.  S.

NOV  12  1898

G.  A.  S.

APR  24  1901

The obituary for Louis Seaverns in 1991 tells us something about the work of the George A. Seaverns during the 1898 tax period.  George Sr. was a grain broker along with his son George Jr.  By 1921 George Jr. would start Seaverns & Co. with Louis:

From The Chicago Tribune, June 25, 1991:

Louis Seaverns, 103, a retired stockbroker for Dean Witter Reynolds Inc., worked for the firm until he was 94 years old. He graduated from Harvard University and was in the 1910 class with poet T.S. Eliot, columnist Walter Lippman and John Reed, subject of the movie, ``Reds.``

A longtime resident of Lake Forest, he died Sunday in Lake Bluff Health Center.

His grandfather, George A. Seaverns, had started as a grain broker in Chicago in 1853 by spending $5 to become a member of the Chicago Board of Trade. Mr. Seaverns became a broker in 1913 and he, with his father, George Jr., started the firm of Seaverns & Co. in 1921.

He was successful in the 1920s, but lost heavily in the 1929 stock market crash.  In 1936, he became the treasurer of the Illinois Republican State Central Committee.  He left the brokerage business in the late 1930s and did not return to it until 1960, when he was hired by Dean Witter at age 72.

Survivors include a stepson, James Holliday; a stepdaughter, Winston Dwyer; and a brother, George A. III, 101 years old.

Services for Mr. Seaverns will be at 2 p.m. Wednesday in the Church of the Holy Spirit, Episcopal, 400 E. Westminster Ave., Lake Forest.

Chicago Board of Trade Members: Nash Wright Company

N. W. Co.

NOV  10  1899

David Thompson scan

Nash Wright members of the CBOT included:

#1135 Charles T. Nash

#2628 William Nash

Nash Wright Co. was a commission trading firm.

Chicago Board of Trade Members: Hately Brothers

The firm of Hately Brothers, general commission merchants and exporters of provisions, grain, tallow, oils and feedstuffs, was established by Walter C. Hately and John Bunnell in 1872.  The business has alwas shown a steady and healthy increase since its organization, and the brand of Hately Brothers has become well known as a guarantee of purity and excellence.  They are large shippers of lard and other pork products to European markets, and, in addition to their own house in Liverpool, the firm in represented abroad by agents in all the principal cities.  Hately Brothers products are, almost without exception, marketed in Europe, being purchased in Chicago and the West and shipped in response to the demands of foreign trade.

-From a History of the City of Chicago, Its Men and Institutions

HATELY BROS.

NOV  1  1898

CANCELLED

David Thompson scan

The firm of Hately Brothers included:

John Craig Hately, CBOT Member #1888

Walter C. Hately, CBOT Member #3556

Chicago Board of Trade Members: William E. Webbe

W. E. Webbe & Co.

SEP  3   1898

CHICAGO.

David Thompson scan

William E. Webbe was a commission trader on the CBOT with member #2301

From the book Origin, Growth & Usefulness of the Chicago Board of Trade:

W. E. Webbe & Co., Commission Merchants, Room 52, No. 161 La Salle Street.--Among the leading and successful houses engaged in the grain and provision commission trade is that of Mssrs. W. E. Webbe & Co., whose offices are at No. 161 La Salle Street.  Mr. W. E. Webbe has been a member of the Board of Trade since 1877, and is one of the most popular gentlemen connected with that body.  He is also a member of the Chicago Produce Exchange, and possesses every facility for transacting human business under the most favorable auspices. 

Mr. Webbe was born in England thirty one years ago.  He has been in Chicago for the past eight years, and during that time won name and place among our most influential merchants.  His career is one of which he may well feel proud, reflecting credit as it does both upon himself, the city of his adoption, and the various commercial organizations with which he has become so permanently identified.

Chicago Board of Trade Members: McReynolds & Company

McReynolds & Company

NOV   1

Langlois scans

McReynolds & Company.

AUG   17   1899

document fragments from futures contracts

George S. McReynolds, CBOT Member #2502, ran this firm, and ran it into prison.  Mr. McReynolds committed business fraud and was sentenced to Joliet prison.  He was released early due to a sick mother.  The New York Times told this rather brief story on August 26, 1910:

Chicago Board of Trade Members: Portus B. Weare of the Weare Commission Company

W. C. CO.

MAR  7  1899

David Thompson scan of a document fragment from a CBOT futures contract

W. C. CO.

AUG  11  1898

Langlois scan

The Weare firm included CBOT members:

#1684 Charles A. Weare

#1685 Portus B. Weare

The Iowa newspaper The Clinton Age from December 1, 1898, ran this ad:

George Haywood in Clinton was an agent for the Weare Commission Company. 

Chicago Board of Trade Members: Fyffe Brothers & Company

FYFFE BROS. & CO.

NOV 25 1899

document fragment from a CBOT futures contract

David Thompson scan

John Fyffe, CBOT #5792 and William Fyffe, CBOT #3622, were both commission merchants at the Chicago Board of Trade and specialized in grain.  John was a director of the CBOT at the time of this cancel.  He would die in 1901.

International Pulp Company

INTERNATIONAL PULP CO.

NOV 13

1900

Langlois scan

The International Pulp Company's primary business, despite its name, was mining, and mining in New York State.  It mined numerous minerals, including asbestos and talc, though it also had interests in forest products and power generation.  The company was not the favorite of environmentalists.

Chicago Board of Trade Members: Rumsey, Lightner & Company

RUMSEY, LIGHTNER & CO.,

 226 LA SALLE ST. CHICAGO.

JUN   10  1899

Langlois scans

RUMSEY, LIGHTNER & CO.

JAN

XX

XXXX

Members of the Chicago Board of Trade from Rumsey, Lightner & Company included:

#1363 Israel P. Rumsey

#2181 Frank P. Schmitt

#394 Frederick Dickinson

From A History of the City of Chicago:  Its Men and Institutions, 1905:

Rumsey, Lightner & Co., commission merchants, was organized in 1892 by Israel P. Rumsey, M. C. Lightner and F. P. Schmitt.  Mr. Rumsey, the senior member, has been in the commission business in Chicago continuously since 1866, excepting about two years. between 1889 and 1892, and has been at various times the head of different firms, some of which have done the largest flour and grain receiving business on the Board of Trade.  Mr. Lightner died in 1895, and Frederick Dickinson was admitted to the firm, and Mr. Lightner's interest purchased. The firm is doing a strictly commission business, receiving grain, flour and seeds from Western shippers, and also buying and shipping for Eastern mills and grain men on a commission basis. Connected with the business is the buying and selling for future delivery, which enters largely into the Board of Trade commission business. The city offices of the firm are at 226 La Salle street, in addition to which they operate branch offices of Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Peoria.

Israel Parsons Rumsey, of the firm of Rumsey, Lightner & Co., commission merchants, was born February 9, 1836, in the town of Stafford, New York, the son of a Genesee County farmer. At the age of seventeen, after an academic education, he was placed in the wholesale and retail dry goods store of Howard & Whitcomb of Buffalo, New York, at the meager salary of $25 and board for the first year. He remained in Buffalo until 1857, when he celebrated his majority by going as far West as Keokuk, Iowa, where he  obtained a situation in April of that year. It was about this time that whole armies of young men were coming West. Seeking employment, and failing to find it, the greater number of them returned to their Eastern homes.

Rumsey, however, determined never to "take the back track," as it was called, and upon the failure of the firm that had employed him, he bought the delivery route of the principal daily paper of Keokuk, "The Gate City," and went to delivering papers, working thereat from one o'clock in the morning until seven. It was not long, however, before he was called back to the same store at much advanced wages, and at the same time being made the acting proprietor, or agent, of the party who purchased the stock, in which capacity his former employers found themselves as clerks under his charge.

Here he remained until the spring of 1858, when he was ordered to move the stock to Chicago.  This change brought him to the city which has since been his business home. He obtained a situation in the fall of 1858 with the grain and provision house of Flint & Wheeler, one of the largest receiving houses in the city. He made rapid progress in mastering the position of salesman, and in 1860, when Flint & Wheeler changed their business more into the line of banking and exchange, they gave much assistance to Mr. Rumsey's first commission firm, which was organized under the name of Finley, Hoyt & Rumsey.

Mr. Rumsey was fairly well established in the commission business, and rapidly making a name for himself, when the Civil war broke out. His patriotism would not allow business prosperity to keep him from giving his services for the suppression of the Rebellion. His forefathers had fought for their country in 1776 and in 1812. Rumsey felt it was a duty he owed his country to fight for it in '61, and in April of that year he helped to organize "Taylor's Chicago Battery," which Was mustered into the United States service July 16, 1861, as Company B, First Illinois Light Artillery: Mr. Rumsey was elected its junior second lieutenant.

The battery left Chicago for Cairo in May, 1861, and was camped at Bird's Point, Missouri, during the fall of '61, and Rumsey's first engagement was in the battle of Belmont, Missouri, on November 7. of that year, which was General U. S. Grant's first battle of the Rebellion. Grant's army was organized for the Tennessee camp in February, 1862, Mr. Rumsey was assigned to the Second Brigade of General John A. McClernand's division, and was acting assistant adjutant-general for General W. H. S. Wallace during the campaign, until reaching Shiloh, Tennessee, which included the battles of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson. On April 3, 1862, General W. H. L. Wallace was assigned to the command of the Second Division of General Grant's army at Shiloh (known as General C. F. Smith's division), and Mr. Rumsey was retained on General Wallace's personal staff, he being such a favorite of the general's that the latter kept him close to him and even insisted on their lying under the same blankets.

Late in the afternoon of the memorable day of April 6, 1862, General Wallace fell mortally wounded, and his body lay upon the field of carnage all night. Mr. Rumsey was detailed among those to accompany the remains to Ottawa, Illinois, where they were interred, and upon his return to his battery found that he had been promoted during his absence to the rank of senior second lieutenant. The battery was assigned to General W. T. Sheman's division, just before the battle of Shiloh, and remained in the same Second Division, Fifteenth Army Corps, until July, 1864. During this time Lieutenant Rumsey took part in all the battles and marches of that most active and reliable division of Sherman's Army of the Tennessee, and "which was never whipped," from Shiloh, Tennessee, April, 1862, to Atlanta, Georgia, July, 1864, and which included the siege of Corinth, battles of Chickasaw Bayou, Arkansas Post, siege of Vicksburg, Jackson, Louisiana, the movement of General Sherman's army from Vicksburg to Memphis by boats, the march from Memphis to Chattanooga, Tennessee, Mission Ridge, General Sherman's march to relief of Burnside at Knoxville, and the campaign to Atlanta. During the siege of Vicksburg he was again promoted from senior second lieutenant to captain of the battery.

Captain Rumsey returned from the war in the fall of 1864, and entered into the flour brokerage business with his brother, John W. Rumsey, whose enlistment in Battery A had just expired, under the name of I. P. & J. W. Rumsey. Two years later they entered upon the receiving of flour, later adding grain, and the firm name was changed to Rumsey, Williams & Co. The name has been changed several times. The next change was to I. P. Rumsey & Co., then to Rumsey & Walker, then to Rumsey & Buell, in all of which firms Mr. Rumsey remained at the head, and continued so until 1889, when he sold his interest to Messrs. A. C. Buell and James Templeton, and retired from the Board of Trade.

This retirement, however, was but temporary, for after two years of engaging in the manufacturing business, his losses convinced him that the saying still held good, and that "old men should not change their business." He accordingly reentered the commission business, in 1892, organizing the firm of Rumsey, Lightner & Co., which still exists under the present title, although Mr. Lightner died in 1895.

Mr. Rumsey is a large stockholder in, and vice-president of, the Cleveland Grain Company of Cleveland, Ohio. This company controls and owns several elevators on the "Big Four" Railroad, that at Cleveland
holding over half a million bushels of grain and doing a business of over $2,000,000 a year.

Mr. Rumsey has at times been quite active in local politics. He organized the campaign for high license in Eugene Cary's run against Carter H. Harrison for mayor of Chicago, the outcome of which was the increase of the liquor license from $100 to $500, and which yields the city over $3,000,000 annually. Mr. Rumsey was a power in the politics of the Fourth Ward, where he resided. He was instrumental in nominating S. D. Foss for alderman on the Independent ticket some years ago, and was made chairman of the campaign committee which carried Foss to victory, much to the surprise of the Republican party, which was especially
strong in that ward. The election of O.O.Wetherell on the Independent ticket, against both party nominees, is another example of Mr. Rumsey's enthusiastic work in local politics. He has been closely identified with "The Citizens' League for the suppression of the sale of liquor to minors and drunkards;" since its organization in 1877, and its president since the death of its first president, Mr. F. F. Elmendorf, in 1883. The history of this league is phenomenal.

Mr. Rumsey was on a number of important committees and active in the preliminary work of securing the World's Fair for Chicago. In this connection he made several visits to other states, and was sent to Washington to look after the expenses there, as the motto of the finance committee was "A million for success, but not a dollar for boodle."

He is prominent in Presbyterian church life and work, and was for eight years one of the board of managers of the Presbyterian Hospital. He is a trustee of the Presbyterian League, chairman of the finance committee that raised the money to build the Grace Presbyterian and Sixth Presbyterian churches, in which he was for many years an elder. He is also identified with the Loyal Legion and Thomas Post, No. 5, of the Grand Army, also a member of the Union League Club.