Biography of WILLIAM HUMMELL

                                                                  (transcribed by: L. Johnson)

 

     The United States can boast of no better or more law-abiding class of citizens than the great number of German people who have found homes within her borders.  Though holding dear and sacred the beloved mother country, they are none the less devoted to the fair country of their adoption.  Among this class is William Hummell, a thrifty farmer of Broomfield township, Isabella county, who for a number of years has been one of the leading citizens of the same, having labored hard not only for his own advancement, but also for the good of the community, his efforts having been abundantly repaid with financial success and the esteem of his fellow men.

     Mr. Hummell was born near Strahleshund, Prussia, Germany, on December 18, 1855.  He is the son of Gustav and Sophia Hummell, the former of whom was born in Prussia in 1812, and the latter born there in 1812, a native of the same village as the father of our subject.  They came to America in the fall of 1869;  the father, having been blind in one eye, and not physically strong, was exempt from the usual military service in his native country.  He believed he could better his condition by coming to America.  He settled in Oakland county, Michigan, and worked out by the day on a farm, remaining there until the spring of 1873, when he came to Isabella county and settled on his present place, consisting of eighty acres.  His family consisted of the following children;  Charles is living in Detroit;  Theodore is deceased, dying in 1910;  Fred lives in Macomb county, this state;  Gustav also lives in that county;  William, of this review. The father of these children died in 1890 and the mother about 1895.

     William Hummell was fourteen years of age when he accompanied his parents to the United States.  He had attended school in his native country, but he received no schooling here.  He was seventeen years of age when he came to Isabella county and helped his father clear the place he bought, which was heavily wooded.  He worked in the woods during the winter and had a pretty hard time of it at first.  He built a little log house, started with practically nothing, and he has, by hard work and persistent effort, accumulated a very comfortable competency and now has a good farm and a good home.  His father paid three dollars per acre for this land.

The son has kept it well improved and carefully tilled the soil so that it has lost none of its original fertility and strength.  The father was old when he came to this country, so the son lived with his parents during their lifetime and fell heir to the farm of eighty acres.  He erected in 1903 a comfortable, roomy and substantial dwelling, with a cellar under its entire length.  He has a good barn, under which is a cement basement, and good outbuildings in general.  He has a splendid apple orchard of two acres and everything about his place indicates good management  and comfort.  He has plenty of small fruit and is a general farmer and stock raiser.  He and his father literally hewed the place out of the wilderness and brought it to its present high state of cultivation.  Mr. Hummell now owns two hundred acres of as fine land as this locality can boast.  Some of the place is used for pasturing purposes.  He has been successful as a general farmer and has a right to be proud of his place.  He has been an interested spectator to the county’s growth which he has witnessed all along the line, from the wilderness to its present thriving condition, and he is well known in the community and highly respected.  He is a member of the Lutheran church at Mt. Pleasant.  He was township treasurer for twelve years and superintendent for eight years, also justice of the peace for one term, filling the positions with credit to himself and to the satisfaction of all.  Politically he is a Republican.