HARDWOOD RECORD 



33 



Obituary 





During the first few days of the New Year, 

 death invaded the ranks of hardwood lumber- 

 men to an appalling extent. On Christmas day, 

 Wellington W. Cummer, the millionaire lumber 

 manufacturer of Jacksonville, Fla., and Cadillac, 

 Mich., passed to the Great Beyond. 



On January 5, death overtook the foremost 

 Nashville lumberman, John B. Ransom, and on 

 the morning of the same day F. S. Hendrickson, 

 one of the best known lumbermen of Chicago, 

 passed away. 



W. W. Cununer 



One of the strongest men that the lumber in- 

 dustry of this country has ever produced was 

 Wellington W. Cummer, who died at his home 



THE LATE \Y. W. CUMMER. 



at Jacksonville, Fla.. on Christmas day. He 

 was at the head of the Jacksonville yellow pine 

 manufacturing house, the Cummer Lumber Com- 

 pany, and was president of the even better 

 known lumber institution, the Cummer-Diggins 

 Company of Cadillac, Mich. 



Mr. Cinnmer had been in poor health for some 

 time. He spent last summer at one of the Ger- 

 man baths and for some weeks this fall was 

 under medical treatment at a Chicago hospital. 

 Death was caused by aneurism. He leaves a 

 wife and three children. Mrs. Mable Roe. Arthur 

 G. Cummer and Waldo E. Cummer ; a sister, 

 Mrs. Fred A. Diggins of Cadillac, and his 

 mother, Mrs. Jacob Cummer of Cadillac. The 

 funeral was held on December 28 at Jackson- 

 ville, and at the same hour memorial services 

 were held at the Congregational Church of Cadil- 

 lac, where there were gathered old friends and 

 former business associates, in addition to the 

 working men from all the camps and mills of 

 the Cummer-Diggins Company. 



Mr. Cummer was born near Toronto, Ontario. 

 October 21, 1S46. In 1860 his parents moved 

 to Newaygo, Mich., where he grew up. He at- 

 tended the common schools and later was grad- 

 uated from a business college in Toronto. He 

 commenced his business career in his father's 

 grist mill at Newaygo. This routine developed 

 into the lumber business and gradually extended 

 northward from Newaygo along the lines of the 

 Grand Rapids & Indiana Railroad to Cadillac. 

 Mr. Cummer was one of the chief builders of 

 the city of Cadillac and Its diversified interests, 

 but his attention was principally devoted to 

 lumber operations involving at various times 



the houses of Jacob Cummer & Son, Blodgett, 

 Cummer & Diggins, Cummer Lumber Company, 

 and later the present corporation of the Cummer- 

 Diggins Company, which includes in its make-up 

 W. W. Cummer, F. A. Diggins, the Estate of 

 Delos F. Diggins and Wm. L. Saunders. 



Early in the nineties Mr. Cummer made ex- 

 tensive purchases of yellow pine timberlands 

 about 125 miles southwest of Jacksonville, built 

 a standard gauge railroad line to connect the 

 timber with a big sawmill plant which he built 

 at Jacksonville. This mill was burned in 1897 

 and was rebuilt on even a larger scale than the 

 first one. Associated with Mr. Cummer in his 

 Florida enterprises were his sons, Arthur G. 

 and Waldo E. Cummer, who undoubtedly will 

 continue the big enterprise. 



Mr. Cummer was a very modest man and 

 never sought political preferment. However, the 

 mayoralty of Cadillac was forced on him for 

 one term, and he also was alderman and a 

 member of the school board for several years. 

 In 1888 he was presidential elector from the 

 ninth Michigan congressional district, and he 

 has held sundry offices in connection with pub- 

 lic interesLs of Cadillac and Jacksonville for 

 some years, in places where he could work advan- 

 tageously for the betterment of the cities in 

 which he was interested in developing. 



The death of Mr. Cummer brings to an end 

 one of the most forceful and useful lives of 

 the generation. He was a man of strong men- 

 tality, strict integrity and broad charity. His 

 death is a distinct loss not only to the lumber 

 trade but to the country at large. 



John B. Kansom 



It is with extreme regret that the Record an- 

 nounces the death of Nashville's foremost lum- 

 berman, John B: Ransom. He was cut off at 

 the very meridian of life on the morning of 

 W'ednesday, January 5. Mr. Ransom was ^ the 

 son of a Rutherford county farmer and lumber 

 dealer. He started in the lumber business in 

 the little town ot Murfreesboro, in the heart of 

 the Tennessee cedar belt, some thirty years ago. 



eluded timberlands, a large sawmill, planing mill 

 and box factory at Nashville, and the immense 

 plant of the Nashville Hardwood Flooring Com- 

 pany. He was recognized as one of the foremost 

 factors in the poplar industry as well as in the 

 oak flooring business. He was also allied with 

 numerous other enterprises in Tennessee, and 

 especially in Nashville, and he has done a great 

 deal for the industrial history of that great 

 southern city. 



John W. Love, of Love, Boyd & Co., was at 

 one time associated in business with Mr. Ran- 

 som. At the time of his death Mr. Ransom 

 was a stockholder in the Gayoso Lumber Com- 

 pany of Memphis. He was not only a large 

 manufacturer of lumber, but purchased immense 

 quantities from other manufacturers as well, 

 which he manipulated through his several Nash- 

 ville factories. Mr. Ransom was also financially 

 interested in the Nashville Transportation Com- 

 pany, owner of a line of tow boats and barges 



THE LATE JOHN B. RANSOM 



His beginning was as modest and unostentatious 

 as has been his demeanor up to the time of his 

 death, yet this self-made man. less than fifty 

 years old, became the head of the foremost lum- 

 ber business in Nashville, and one of the great- 

 est in the country. His lumber interests In- 



THE LATE V. S. HENDRICKSON 



in the Cumberland River. He was allied with 

 the American National Bank of Nashville, and 

 the Nashville Tie & Cedar Company. He was 

 an ex-president of the Hardwood Manufacturers' 

 Association of the United States, in which 

 capacity he served this organization two terms. 

 He was a member ot the book committee of 

 the Methodist Episcopal Church South, and ot 

 the Board of Stewards of the West End Metho- 

 dist Church of Nashville. 



Mr. Ransom was a man of indomitable energy, 

 untiring zeal, good business judgment, with ever- 

 present ner\'e to back his judgment, of unusual 

 executive ability, quickness of decision and fair- 

 ness in dealings. These attributes enabled him 

 to spell "success" with capital letters while he 

 was still a young man. 



Mr. Ransom was ill just a week, fp to that 

 time he seemed in good health and spirits. He 

 was taken violently ill and soon thereafter lapsed 

 into a comatose condition, from which he never 

 emerged. During the first few days of. his ill- 

 ness, physicians announced the trouble to be 

 acute indigestion. On last Monday he showed 

 an alarming turn for the worse, and a consul- 

 tation of physicians was held. The news of this 

 beloved man's death caused a pall of gloom 

 to be cast over the entire city of Nashville, for 

 ho was regarded in the capital city ot Tennessee 

 as the foremost man who had assisted in its up- 

 building in every material way. There was 

 never an enterprise proposed or launched in 

 which his unerring judgment and alert brain 

 saw good that it did not receive his hearty 

 advice and cooperation. 



The life (his man had led, the impress he 



