ANTHONY SCHUMAKER

From "Past and Present of Eaton county" - 1906

HON. ANTHONY B. SCHUMAKER, one of the representative citizens and leading business men of the city of Grand Ledge, and ex-member of the Michigan state senate, is a native of Coblentz, Rhenish Prussia, where he was born June 1, 1848, being a son of Anthony and Anna Sophia (Walters) Schumaker, the former of whom was born in Coblentz, in 1814, and died in Coldwater, Michigan, in 1858, while the latter, who was born in the city of Paris, France, in 1811, likewise passed the closing years of her life in Coldwater, where she died in 1868. They became the parents of eight children, five of whom died in Germany. Robert died in Coldwater, Michigan, at the age of fifteen years; Anthony B. was the next younger; and Charles is a prosperous farmer of Branch county, Michigan, where he owns a farm in Coldwater township.

The father was a lieutenant in the artillery division of the Russian army, but resigned his commission and learned the trade of ship carpenter, to which he gave his attention for some time. In 1853 he came to America, leaving his family in Prussia. He located first in St. Joseph county, Michigan, where he was employed on a farm, near White Pigeon, for one year. He then sent for his family to join him in this country, he going to New York city to meet them. For the ensuing six months they resided in Elmira, New York, and then came to Michigan and located in Branch county, where the parents passed the remainder of their lives, the father having there followed the vocation of farming in his later years.

The subject of this sketch secured his rudimentary education in the schools of his native land, having been about six years of age at the time when he came with his mother to join his father in the United States. He attended the parochial and district schools in Branch county, his parents having been communicants of the Catholic church, and thereafter he worked for his board for three years while attending the high school in Coldwater, in which he was graduated. He then secured a clerical position in the drug and grocery store of E. R. Clarke &
Company, long known as one of the leading mercantile concerns of Coldwater, and he continued in the service of this firm until 1872, in the meanwhile having gained a thorough knowledge of practical pharmacy.

In the year mentioned he took up his residence in Grand Ledge, buying a stock of drugs and groceries, in a wooden building on South Bridge street. He took possession on the 24th of October, there maintaining his headquarters until 1875, when he sold a farm which he had previously purchased, near Coldwater, and erected the substantial brick store which he has since occupied, on South Bridge street. Mr. Schumaker has built up a very large and prosperous business, carrying full and complete lines of drugs and groceries and having a representative patronage, while there are few druggists in the state who have been longer engaged in the business than has he.

In 1889 was effected the organization of the Grand Ledge Sewer Pipe Company, of which Mr. Schumaker was made vice-president, and in the following year he was elected president, retaining this position until May 1, 1900, when the plant and business were sold to the American Sewer Pipe Company. He is first vice-president of the Grand Ledge State Bank, and is the owner of a finely improved farm of one hundred acres, in Oneida township, having purchased this property in 1901. It is his intention to devote a considerable portion of this land to the raising of peppermint, an important industry in a number of the counties of southern Michigan at the present time. In the present year, 1906, he will plant twenty acres of peppermint on his farm.

Mr. Schumaker is a man of progressive ideas and much initiative power, and he has not hedged in his life with purely personal interests, but has taken a public-spirited concern in all that touches the general welfare of his home city, county and state, enjoying marked popularity in Eaton county and having here been prominent and influential in the councils of the Republican party. For many years he has been a member of the Republican county committee, and he has been an effective worker in the party cause. He served one term as treasurer of Grand Ledge and eight years as a member of the board of aldermen. In 1900 he was elected to represent the fifteenth senatorial district in the state senate, rolling up at the polls a flattering majority of eleven thousand votes. He proved a valuable working member of the senate, in which he served as chairman of the committee on the regulation of the liquor traffic, and as a member of the committees on agricultural interests, Pontiac asylum for the insane, industrial school for boys, mechanical interests, and normal colleges. He has passed the degrees of the blue lodge, chapter and council in the Masonic fraternity, and is also identified with the Knights of Pythias. He attends the Protestant Episcopal church, of which Mrs. Schumaker was a communicant.

September 21, 1876, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Schumaker to Miss Elizabeth A. Raleigh, of Lansing, Michigan, a daughter of Walter Raleigh, who was a lineal descendant of Sir Walter Raleigh, in whose honor he was named. Mr. Raleigh came from Rochester, New York, to Michigan, locating in Birmingham, and for many years was a traveling salesman for the American Eagle Tobacco Company, of Detroit. he passed the closing years of his life at Lansing, where he died in January, 1903, at the age of eighty-four years. His wife also died in that city. Mrs. Schumaker was the only child born to her parents. Her death occurred on March 5, 1888. Mr. and Mrs. Schumaker became the parents of two children: Charles, who was drowned in the Grand river, July 8, 1898, at the age of nineteen years; he attended the public schools of Grand Ledge, and was a student in the high school when he met his untimely death. He was a particularly bright youth, and gave promise of mave promise of maturing into a
useful member of the community; and Bertha, who remains with her father, is a graduate of St. Mary's College, at Monroe, Michigan, and is an accomplished musician.