Menzus Raynard Bump (1838-1913)

Menzus R. Bump, from the Spokane Spokesman Review, May 7, 1913.

   The Wisconsin State Assembly has had several of its members profiled here over the past five years and that list of oddly named assemblymen grows ever larger with the addition of Menzus Raynard Bump, an outstandingly named resident of Dunn County. Earning a place here on the site due to his serving one term in the Wisconsin legislature, Bump later removed to Spokane, Washington, where he gained further distinction in that city's Masonic community. 

   A native of New York, Menzus Raynard Bump was born in Washington County on May 28, 1838. One of several children born to Charles W. (1803-1843) and Almira Ruth (Bullock) Bump (1807-1864), Menzus R. Bump looks to have received his unusual first and middle names in honor of Menzies Rayner (1770-1850), a prominent clergyman in the Universalist church who held pastorates in New York, Connecticut, and Maine. 

   Menzus Bump received a "common school and academic education" in his native state and relocated to Dunn County, Wisconsin in 1856. Settling in the town of Mondovi, Bump signed on for service in the 25th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment in 1862 and would see action at the battles of Vicksburg, Atlanta, and Lookout Mountain. Following fighting at Chattanooga in 1863 he was promoted to first sergeant and later served under General William T. Sherman until being honorably discharged in June 1865.

   Following his return to Wisconsin Bump entered the flour milling business, which he would continue in until his removal to Spokane, Washington around 1890. In 1868 he purchased a mill at Rock Falls, Wisconsin that he continued to operate until 1878, when it was washed away in a flood. A few months following its destruction a "new, superior mill" was established in its place, with The History of Northern Wisconsin describing it as having been:

"The best in all the county; patent rollers, purifiers, and all the latest mill machinery. Capacity a day is fifty barrels of flour, 350 bushels of feed."

  In November 1868 Menzus R. Bump married Elma A. Crocker (1843-1911), to whom he was wed for over forty years. The couple would later have four children: Maude Alice (1869-1916), Grace (born 1873), Bessie and Milan Raynard (1881-1924). Of these children, Milan Bump would gain prominence in the electrical industry, serving for a time as chief engineer of the Henry L, Doherty Co. of New York. He later gained further distinction as President of the National Electric Light Association, being named to that post in 1921.

   Active in the political life of Rock Falls, Menzus Bump held several local offices and for three years served as chairman of the Board of Supervisors. In November 1875 he was elected as Dunn County's representative to the Wisconsin State Assembly and during the 1876 session served on the committees on Assessment and Collection of Taxes and the Militia. Bump's service in the state assembly lasted but one term and afterward returned to private life in Rock Falls. He briefly reemerged on the political scene in 1881 he was one of 47 petitioners who lobbied the assembly to pass an amendment to the Wisconsin state constitution that prohibited the sale and manufacture of alcoholic beverages.

   After three decades of residence in Dunn County, Wisconsin, the Bump family relocated to Spokane, Washington in 1889. Following his removal, Menzus Bump dabbled in real estate and for over two decades was an active member of the Masonic order in Spokane, having joined the order early in his Wisconsin residency. A member of the Spokane Lodge No. 34 of Free and Accepted Masons, Bump also held memberships in the Electa chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star and the Sedgwick Post of the Grand Army of the Republic.

  Menzus R. Bump died of complications of pneumonia on May 6, 1913, shortly before his 75th birthday. He had been ill for only a few days and expired at his home. His wife Elma had predeceased her husband two years prior and both were interred at the Greenwood Memorial Terrace in Spokane following their deaths.

From the Spokane Spokesman Review, May 9, 1913.

Vivus Wright Dorwin (1832-1904), Vivus Wood Smith (1804-1881)

Vivus W. Dorwin, from the History of Buffalo and Pepin Counties, Vol. 2, 1919.

     Four-term Wisconsin state assemblyman Vivus Wright Dorwin was a transplant to Durand, Wisconsin from Jefferson County, New York, coincidentally enough the same county that Delatus Miles Aspinwall (profiled a few days ago) resided in before removing to "America's Dairyland". While both of these oddly named Wisconsin transplants made a name for themselves in their respective counties, Mr. Dorwin's has proven to be a bit more prominent than the man who preceded him here, as he erected the first grist mill in Durand and was a Civil War veteran, cheese factory operator, and banker.

   Born in Champion, New York on January 15, 1832, Vivus W. Dorwin was one of three sons born to William and Elizabeth Wright Dorwin. He would attend schools local to the Jefferson County area and prior to his removal to Pepin County, Wisconsin had been a farmer in his native town. Dorwin married Helen Marriett Van Hosen (died 1911) in March of 1854 and would have a total of ten children: William V. (?--?), Helen I. (?--?), Harriett M. (?--?), Marcellus (1862-1924), John (?--?), Lillian (?--?), Edward (?--?), Laura (?--?), Mary (died 1906) and Roscoe (died 1897). 

   Soon after their wedding Dorwin and his wife removed from Jefferson County to Wisconsin, first settling in Adams County. They resided here for a short time and around 1855 settled in Durand township in Pepin County. A short while after his arrival he undertook the first steps in erecting a grist mill, purchasing mill machinery from Milwaukee and had it shipped via ox-cart to Pepin County. Completion of the mill occurred in mid-1857 and several years later Dorwin added a wool carding mill to the already existing grist-mill.

   In 1862 Dorwin began a year-long stint in the Union Army, serving as a captain in Co. G of Wisconsin's 25th Volunteer Infantry. The regiment would be deployed to combat hostile Indians in frontier Minnesota and would resigned his commission in 1863 due to being afflicted with fever. Following his military service, Dorwin returned to Pepin County and recommenced with his business activities, purchasing a dairy farm in 1869 and three years later built a cheese factory near the previously mentioned mill(s). 

   Vivus W. Dorwin first entered into political life in Pepin County in the late 1860s when he began service as chairman of the board of Durand Township, continuing in this role for nearly two decades. In November 1876 he was elected to his first term in the Wisconsin General Assembly, defeating Republican nominee Harvey Brown, 985 votes to 744. In the 1877 session, Dorwin held a seat on the House Committee on Printing. In November 1877 he was re-elected to the assembly, defeating Independent Republican candidate George W. Gilkey by a vote of 696 to 452.  

  Dorwin's service in the 1878 session saw him sit on the committee on Federal Relations, and in the 1884 election year was returned to the legislature for a third term, being named to the committees on the Militia and Public Improvements for the 1885 session. The year 1888 saw Dorwin win election to a fourth term in the assembly, defeating his Republican opponent P.J. Bryan by a vote of 759 to 611. In the session of 1889 Dorwin was a member of the committees on State Affairs and at the close of the term returned to Pepin County. 

   In March 1904 Vivus Dorwin and his wife celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary, and just a few months following that milestone Dorwin died at age 72 on September 27, 1904. His wife Helen would survive him by several years, dying in 1911. Both were interred at the Forest Hill Cemetery in Durand, Wisconsin. Public service would continue in the Dorwin family when Marcellus Dorwin (Vivus' son) was elected to represent Buffalo and Pepin County in the Wisconsin Assembly in 1924.

From the "History of Onondaga County, New York", 1878.

   Distinguished Syracuse, New York resident Vivus Wood Smith was a prominent figure in the early years of the Republican Party in New York and could count among his friends William H. Seward ( U.S. Senator, Governor, and Secretary of State), Horace Greeley, and political boss Thurlow Weed. A past county clerk for Onondaga County, Smith attained further distinction as a newspaper publisher and editor, and in 1860 was selected as a delegate to the Republican National Convention held in Baltimore.

  A native of Massachusetts, Vivus Smith was born in Berkshire County in that state on January 27, 1804, a son of Silas (1779-1825) and Eunice Bagg Smith (1782-1856). His formative years were spent in Lanesborough (the town of his birth), farming, and studying law there. He relocated to Onondaga County, New York in 1827 and soon after his arrival purchased the Onondaga Journal. He was affiliated with this paper until 1829 when he removed to Syracuse, and here would start up another paper, the Onondaga Standard.

  In 1837 Smith underwent a change in his political leanings, switching allegiance to the Whig party (having previously been a Democrat.) In the year following his switch, Smith established the Whig-leaning Western State Journal, a paper that would later undergo a name change to the Syracuse Journal. In 1841 Smith left Syracuse for Ohio, and after resettling in Columbus recommenced with his publishing activities, founding another Whig-based paper called the Ohio State Journal.

  Smith's time in Ohio proved to be short-lived, as he returned to Syracuse in the mid-1840s. In 1846 he was elected as Onondaga County clerk and after serving three years in that post entered upon duties as Superintendent of the Onondaga Salt Springs, being appointed to that post in 1855 by then Governor Myron Holley Clark. Smith served ten years as superintendent and in 1860 was part of the New York delegation to the Republican National Convention in Baltimore, where Abraham Lincoln was nominated for the Presidency.

   In his later years, Vivus Smith continued to be an active public official, serving for a time as a state canal appraiser.  He died on February 7, 1881, and was survived by his second wife Theodora Morey (whom he had married in 1839), as well as four children: Carroll Earl (1832-1904), Fillmore Morey (1843-1919), Seward Valentine (1846-1905) and Florence (1848-1922). Smith and his entire family are interred at the Oakwood Cemetery in Syracuse.

                                                   From the DeRuyter New Era, February 7, 1881.

Newcomb Spoor (1852-1935)

From the 1917 Wisconsin Blue Book.

   A multi-term member of the Wisconsin State House of Representatives, Newcomb Spoor (and his rather odd name) left a memorable mark on Wisconsin law when in 1913 he introduced a bill in the legislature that prohibited frogs and toads from being hunted out of season. An ardent conservationist and outdoorsman, Spoor was a New Yorker by birth, being born in the city of Oswego on March 27, 1852, one of five children born to Cornelius VanWormer (1823-1891) and Charity Delia Huntsinger Spoor (1830-1892). The Spoor family moved from New York to Wisconsin shortly after Newcomb's birth and eventually settled in Waushara County. 
   Spoor's education took place in the Berlin, Wisconsin school system and he graduated from the Berlin High School in 1874. He married on December 20, 1878, to Jennie Sherman (born 1859), and the couple are recorded as being childless. Despite a lack of biographical material on Mr. Spoor, it appears that he spent a good majority of his life engaged as a machinist and farmer in the Green Lake County area, as well as spending time in the wilderness of Silver Lake, where he owned a cottage. 
  The Wisconsin Blue Book notes that Spoor held a number of local town offices before his service in the state assembly, but fails to elaborate on what they may have been. He was elected to his first term in the legislature in November 1910, defeating Democratic nominee Charles Boettage by a vote of 1,593 to 1,397. During this term, Spoor held a seat on the house committees on Agriculture exhibitions, and Banks and Elections. In 1912 he won a second term in the house, again defeating Charles Boettage by a slim margin, 1,425 votes to 1,393. 

Newcomb "Newt" Spoor, pictured in the 1913 Wisconsin Blue Book.

   It was during the 1912-1914 session of the legislature that Newcomb Spoor left his imprint on Wisconsin history. A man with a keen knowledge of environmental affairs and conservation, Spoor had for nearly three decades before his legislative service pursued the study of the frog, learning of its spawning habits, the creature's diet, and "the frog catching industry of the region, with its headquarters in Oshkosh, Wisconsin". During his years of study on the frog, Spoor took careful note that wherever the frog lived in abundance, crops grew well, as the insects that usually hampered crop growth were the frog's primary food source. Spoor also found that wherever the frog population had been destroyed by hunting, "grasshoppers and bugs had ruined everything."

   After his decades of research, Spoor was in the midst of his second term in the assembly when he first drew up his bill for the protection of frogs and toads. As Spoor himself related in an interview in the 1921 edition of the American Magazine: 

"I drew up my frog bill for the legislature in 1913. For five weeks it lay at my desk before I dared introduce it; I knew I'd be laughed at. The night of the hearing the galleries of the assembly chamber were chock-full--with people who had come to laugh. I decided to give them what they wanted. A bunch of my friends in the assembly were supplied with wooden rattlers, and after I had made my speech they started them going. The whole place sounded like it was full of frogs and it brought down the house. There was only one vote against me."

  Although his bill was denounced by some people as a piece of "freak legislation", Spoor and his green friend got the last laugh. The bill passed the legislature and in the months after its passage, Spoor's legislation received substantial press in the literature of the time, including the below caricature in the Milwaukee Journal. In the 1921 write-up on Spoor in Volume 92 of the American Magazine, it was noted that many farmers "have renewed cause to thank the 'father of the frog law" due to his foresight in keeping the frog population at a level where it could be of use in the elimination of insects.

This caricature of Newcomb Spoor appeared in the March 5, 1913 edition of the Milwaukee Journal.

   With his becoming the "father of the frog law", Newcomb Spoor continued to represent the county of Green Lake in the Wisconsin Assembly, being reelected in 1914 and 1916, in the latter year defeating local Judge Herman Megow by a vote of 1,685 to 413. After his fourth term in 1919, Spoor chose not to be a candidate for reelection. Three years following his leaving the legislature, Spoor chose to reenter politics, mounting what would be his last campaign for public office. In November 1922 he won re-election to the Assembly for his fifth term, this time representing the county of Waushara. During the 1923-25 term, Spoor held the position of chairman of the committee on Fish and Game and also served on the committee on Rules. During his stewardship of the Fish and Game committee, the Milwaukee Journal noted that Spoor was "influential in obtaining state appropriations for fish hatchery programs and enforcement of laws to protect fish and game."

From Volume 92 of the American Magazine, 1921.

    After his final term in the legislature, Newcomb Spoor retired to private life in his native town of Berlin. During his twilight years, he spent a good majority of his time at his cottage in Silver Lake, Wisconsin, pursuing life in the great outdoors. Remarked by the American Magazine as an "ardent and philosophical fisherman", the knowledgeable Spoor is recorded as having acted as a tour guide and counselor to many visiting city dwellers who vacationed in the wilderness area of Silver Lake, even helping to rescue endangered swimmers and boaters. In 1927 Spoor received the honor of having eight acres of wilderness near his home in Silver Lake named in his honor. Dubbed "Newcomb Spoor Park", this protected area was a fitting tribute to a man who had devoted so much of his private and public life to conservation and environmental causes.

  Newcomb Spoor died at age 83 in September 1935. A burial location for both Spoor and his wife is unknown at the time of this writing, but seeing that both his mother and father are interred at the Oakwood Cemetery in Berlin, it may not be a foregone conclusion that Spoor and his wife may be buried there.

From the July 10, 1927 edition of the Milwaukee Journal.

Ammi Ruhamah Robbins Butler (1821-1901), Ammi Storer Ladd (1835-1910), Ammi Lord Boynton (1822-1873)

  This intriguingly named man is Ammi Ruhamah Robbins Butler, who was born September 4, 1821, in Fairfield, Vermont, the son of Dr. Ammi Butler. Both father and son were presumably named in honor of noted New England clergyman Ammi Ruhamah Robbins (1740-1813), who maintained a ministry for over fifty years and later served as a trustee of Williams College. The Butler family removed from Vermont when their son was still in his infancy and resettled in New York. Young Ammi would later attend schools in the village of Alexander and married here in 1843 to Orvilla Tanner (1819-1895). The couple were wed for over fifty years and are believed to have been childless. 
    Ammi R.R. Butler studied law in Buffalo, New York, and was admitted to the state bar in 1846. Soon afterward he relocated to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he permanently settled. Establishing his law practice in that city, Butler quickly advanced to the forefront of his profession and by the early 1850s was serving as District Attorney of Milwaukee County. 
He was twice re-elected to that post and in 1866 he won election to the Wisconsin State Assembly, representing the county of Milwaukee until leaving the legislature in 1868.
   In 1869 Ammi R.R. Butler was urged by members of the state Democratic party to run for the office of Chief Justice of the Wisconsin State Supreme Court against the incumbent Luther S. Dixon but refused to become a candidate. In 1876 Butler was nominated for Mayor of Milwaukee (despite his protests) and was subsequently elected without opposition. He was the first Milwaukee mayor to serve two terms, with his tenure concluding in 1878.

                                                            Butler's official Mayoral portrait.

   Having retired from the practice of law in 1874, Ammi R.R. Butler continued with civic activities in his native city and for a number of years served as president of the Milwaukee County Bar Association. He continued to reside in Milwaukee until his death at age 79 on April 4, 1901. Butler had been preceded in death by his wife Orvilla in 1895 and both were interred at the Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee. He was subsequently memorialized by his contemporaries as a "marked man in his profession", as well as having been a

"A man of commanding presence, of dignified bearing, rather reserved though courteous in manner, and of exceptionally personal character."

Portrait from "the Minutes of the Maine Conference", April 1903.

  A distinguished Methodist minister in Maine for over forty years, Ammi Storer Ladd entered politics in the early 1890s when he became the Prohibition Party nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives from Maine's 2nd congressional district. In addition to his run for Congress Ladd was later a two-time candidate for Maine Governor, again being the Prohibition Party standard bearer.

  The son of Jesse and Sophronia Ladd, Ammi Storer Ladd was born on June 17, 1835, in Phillips, Maine. He attended school in the town of his birth and was later a graduate of Kent's Hill Seminary. Ladd joined the Methodist Episcopal Church as a young man and joined the Maine Methodist Conference in 1860. He was licensed to preach that same year and in July 1861 married to Lydia Golder (died 1880), with whom he had one daughter, Lizzie (1862-1867).

  Through the succeeding years, Ammi S. Ladd's ministry took him to a number of Methodist churches throughout Maine, holding pastorships in Kent's Hill, Waterford, Biddeford, Bath, Portland, Lewiston, Bangor, and Auburn. In 1869 he received an honorary degree from Colby University and several years later served as a member of the Maine delegation to the Methodist General Conference held in Baltimore. 

   Following Lydia Ladd's death in 1880 Ammi Ladd remarried to Marion Meriwether, with whom he had two further children, Lydia (born 1882) and John (died in infancy in 1885). Marion Ladd died in 1885 and one year later Ladd remarried for a third time, taking as his wife Helen Osgood (1854-1917). The couple would have one child, Marion, who died in infancy in 1887.

   Active in the temperance movement in Maine, Ladd was a staunch prohibitionist and in 1892 entered politics when he received the nomination for Congress as the Prohibition Party candidate. As one of five candidates vying for the seat, Ladd placed a distant fourth on election day, polling 803 votes to six-term incumbent Nelson Dingley's winning total of 17, 194. Four years later Ladd was again the Prohibition Party nominee, this time vying for the Maine Governorship. On election day 1896, he placed fourth in a field of five candidates, losing out to Republican candidate Llewellyn Powers. Ladd was dealt another gubernatorial loss in 1898, garnering just 2326 votes to Powers' winning total of 53, 900.

  Ammi S. Ladd spent the final years of his life in Yarmouth, Maine, where he died at age 74 on February 6, 1910. He was survived by his wife Helen, who, following her death in 1917, was interred alongside her husband at the Riverside Cemetery in Yarmouth.

Portrait from the Maine legislative composite of 1865.

    In a March 31, 2017 update to a nearly six-year-old article, another politically affiliated "Ammi" has been located...Ammi Lord Boynton of Cornish, Maine. A two-term member of the Maine House of Representatives from York County, little information could be located on Boynton, and the discovery of the above portrait (part of a larger photo composite featuring members of the 1865 Maine legislature) came as a welcome surprise!

   Ammi Lord Boynton was the son of Joseph Deering and Hannah (Chick) Boynton, his birth occurring in Hiram, Maine on April 18, 1822. He married in May 1859 to Elizabeth Cooper, with whom he had at least three children, Charlie (died in infancy in 1864), Nellie (1868-1875) and Amy (1872-1876).

   A resident of Cornish for a good majority of his life, Boynton was a farmer and gained distinction in local politics, serving as a town selectman for Cornish from 1863-67. Boynton represented Cornish in the Maine state legislature for two terms (1865 and 1868) and during the former session sat on the committees on the Division of Towns and County Estimates.

  Following his time in the legislature, Boynton became a founding member of the Cornish Savings Bank in 1869. He died four years later at age 51 on June 19, 1873, and was interred at the Riverside Cemetery in Cornish.