Elmour Lum
| Date of Interment or Death | 10/09/1944 |
|---|---|
| Location | Old Fairview |
| Section | D |
| Block-Lot-Grave | 5-6-1 |
Obituary
Funeral Is Held For E. D. Lum Monday From Local Church
Senior Partner of Firm Dies Week After Suffering Severe Paralytic Stroke
E. D. Lum, senior member in the Richland County Farmer-Globe firm died Friday afternoon at St. Francis Hospital where he had been taken a week previous after suffering a severe paralytic stroke. Funeral services were held this, Monday, afternoon from Wahpeton Congregational Church with Rev. R. B. Hartman officiating and Masonic rites were conducted at the graveside in Fairview Cemetery.
Mr. Lum was well known through the county as author of the Skyride and through the state where he has owned and published newspapers since 1906. The family came to Wahpeton in August, 1927, purchasing and consolidating the Richland County Farmer and Wahpeton Globe.
At Lum’s bedside when he passed away were his wife and daughter, Mrs. L. R. Bystrom of Minneapolis and his two sons and daughter-laws, Mr. and Mrs. Donald Lum and Pvt. And Mrs. Eldon Lum.
In addition to being the senior member of the partnership which publishes the Farmer-Globe, and owns an interest in the Traill County Tribune of Mayville of which R. W. Condit is the editor, he owned considerable real estate in and around Wahpeton. The firm will continue as E. D. Lum & Sons.
Pallbearers at the funeral services were Farmer-Globe employees: Lawrence LeDuc, Alfred Karst, Frank White, Nicholas Stommes, Clarence Amundson, M. Gilgenbach, Walter Paulson and Ralph Justus. Honorary pallbearers were longtime family friends: A. G. Divet, R. T. Barber, F. N. Nobel, A. W. Hoppert, Frank Vertin, Geo. Roeder, I. E. Lillegard and Jos. G. Forbes.
Elmour Denten Lum was born in Clarendon, Mich., August 31, 1871, and accompanied his parents to Northwood, Iowa in a wagon train at the age of 12. He was married to Edith Marion Counter at Graceville, Minn., April 10, 1901.
Besides Mrs. Lum he leaves three children, E. Donald Lum, Mrs. L. R Bystrom, of Minneapolis, and Pvt. D. Eldon Lum, army air corps, Pampa, Texas. He was associated with his two sons in publishing the Richland County Farmer-Gobe at Wahpeton, a bi-weeky with a circulation exceeded only by daily newspapers in North Dakota. There are seven grandchildren Marion, Merna, and Melinda, Gretchen and Susan Lum and Edith Marion and Lydene Bystrom.
Active in SAR
He was a former national vice president general of the Sons of the American Revolution, was North Dakota president general of that organization and held other state offices of the SAR. He was a past president of the Wahpeton Rotary club and in years of membership was one of the oldest in the North Dakota Press association, since 1906. He was a former member of the North Dakota planning board.
Mr. Lum was a past director of the Wahpeton Chamber of Commerce and a member of the Wahpeton Masonic lodge, No 15, the Royal Arch Masons, the Commandery, and El Zagel Shrine of Fargo. He also had served as a trustee of the Congregational church of Wahpeton.
In 1929 The Farm Forum asked Mr. Lum to fill in a biography blank for its records and at that time he wrote an interesting letter, which follows in part: Wrote Own Story
“I don’t know that I have any hobby, except perhaps, machinery. I have always enjoyed taking care of and keeping up machinery. I have a steam engineer’s license given me by the Minnesota boiler inspection department some years ago and in 1906, I went to Chicago, built or assembled, an automobile and drove it to Litchville, N.D. The old timers will perhaps remember that.
“I wrote some copy for newspapers in Iowa previous to 1899, and owned my first newspaper at Kensal, N.D., in the fall of 1906. I was traveling out of Minneapolis and selling a full line of farm implements and met Tom Mork, of Wheaton, Minn., he suggested that we start a hardware store at Litchville, which we did and that was how I came to North Dakota.
“The first money I ever earned in my life was driving a horse on a hay rake when I was about 9 years old. The man neglected to pay me for the labor. He afterward became a wealthy merchant. That was also my first education as a credit man. “The first money that I now recall receiving was earned operating was known as a “doll rake” on the Fourth of July for ‘Doc’ Fountain, who afterward became well known as a Kickapoo Indian medicine doctor and made many trips though this country.
Ran Candy Stand
“My first business venture that I now recall was on the fair grounds of Winona, Minn., where my cousin, Al Lum, of my own age, and I operated a hot candy stand. That was when I was probably 15 and the following 10 falls for about a month every year I followed the fairs and bought concessions.
“The six or eight years previous to coming to North Dakota, I was in southern Iowa where I compiled county atlases for Tama, Grundy, Blackhawk counties and others. “Deciding that I wanted to come west I wrote letters to a number of machinery dealers and newspaper men in Minnesota and North Dakota and other places, offering to come up and start work and they could pay me whatever they thought I could earn; I had then as much confidence in myself as I have now. I received several replies, one from John H. Jones Hankinson; John McRae and Sons, Graceville, Minn., and others. I guess I stopped off in Graceville because it was the nearest point. In any event I stopped there. Mrs. Lum and I were married at Graceville and our oldest boy, Donald was born there.
Was in Hardware
“I left Graceville to take a road position but not liking the road work, engaged in the hardware business at Litchville, Billy Wells was then operating the Bulletin and selling land in connection and he was making such a success of it and so much money that I became envious and went over to Kensal and bought the paper and after operating it for a year sold it to good advantage and went to Carrington, where I was associated with C. B. Oraden, then a young attorney. “There seemed to be at that time great opportunity to trade land for newspaper and so at various times I acquired papers in Minnesota, South Dakota, Iowa, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Virginia and other places, invariably exchanging North Dakota lands for the newspapers. “The only money I recall having made out of politics was in connection with one of these deals. This was at Waverly, Virginia.
“I bought a half section of land from the D. S. B. Johnston Land company for one dollar an acre down and exchanged my equity even for the only newspaper located at Waverly, Va. There was some considerable correspondence through the bank before the deal was finally closed. Eventually I went down and took possession of the paper and after the first issued was out the banker a splendid old gentleman, came in and asked if I was a Republican. When I assured him that I was, he asked me if I was a Roosevelt Republican. This was about the time that Roosevelt (Col. Theodore) had shown some favor to some colored man and this antagonized the South. Seeing what I considered a possible ray of light, I assured him I was a Roosevelt Republican. He informed me then and there that I would not be permitted to operate a paper in that town: they would not have a Roosevelt Republican for an editor. I explained to the banker that he had been a little unfair to me that he could have explained this affair before I bought the paper.
“To make a long story short, the good Democrats in town formed a stock company and bought the paper from me at an agreed price of $3,500 and as I have explained, that was the only money I have ever made out of politics.
Owned 20 Papers
“I have owned 11 papers in North Dakota and 9 in Minnesota at various times, with the usual ups and downs. In 1910, I lost every cent I had in the world; in 1911 I made some $3,000 above a living, on commissions on land sales alone.
“I have been more of a trader, I suppose, than a newspaper man, although whatever papers I have owned in this or any other state, carried a larger volume of newspaper business than any other paper at the time similarly situated so far as I was able to learn.
“In 1927 I sold a daily paper at Valley City and was so situated that it mattered very little where we located. With that in mind we drove some 8,000 miles, my wife, two boys and daughter, looking for a location. But as soon as we left Minnesota the only thought the family appeared to have, and I shared the thought with them, was that we wanted to get back to North Dakota and so at the suggestion of Al Nelson of the Western Newspaper Union, we came and looked over Wahpeton.
Broke Many Horses
“My father was in the livery and horse business when I was growing up and I became pretty well acquainted with that line of business, when I came to Graceville, Minn., I bought and sold horses and cattle there for three years and was considered an expert with horses. In fact I have broken hundreds of broncos and that type of horse; but that probably has no place in the story.
“I owned the newspaper at Kensal in 1906-07 and again in 1912-13; I owned the Mayville paper in 1915-17 and own it again now in company with B. W. Condit. Was a stockholder in the Times-Record Valley City in 1912-15 and principal owner in 1926-27.
“Just now I am preparing a book, which is in type, a family genealogy of our branch of the Lum family as well as other families through which we descend. Am a member of the Sons of the American Revolution on the record of my Revolutionary ancestor, Andrew Lum and several other Revolutionary ancestors; Mrs. Lum was the daughter of Emma Fuller, who was a direct descendant of Samuel Fuller of the Mayflower through the Wells-Fuller lines, I have worked on our family genealogy the past 15 or 18 years.
E. D. Lum, senior partner in the Richland County Farmer-Globe firm and veteran North Dakota newspaper man, was laid to rest Monday afternoon: he died Friday afternoon at St. Francis Hospital following a week’s illness. He was a member of the Masonic Lodge, past present of the Rotary Club, national vice-president; and trustee of the Sons of the American Revolution, a former trustee of Wahpeton Congregational Church and a member of the N.D. Press Association since 1906.
Headstone photograph(s)
Location
Old Fairview is located on the southern half of the cemetery grounds.