Rare Article The Life & Times of John P. Clum, The Tombstone Epitaph ~ Tombstone, Arizona
The Tombstone Epitaph.
Special Historical Edition
Tombstone, Cochise County, Arizona Territory
America's Last Frontiersman
The Life and Times of John P. Clum.
John Philip Chum was at the center & political life in the early 1880 founder and first editor of The Tombstone Epitaph, first elected mayor, postmaster, school board chairman, head of a vigilante Hante "safety committee, and vocal opponent a nefarious land speculation scheme, Yet, Clum didn't mention any of these Tombstone activities as achievements when he filled out a college alumni questionnaire in 1930, two years before his death.
Instead, Clam emphasized his once Controversial, later universally commended, service as the federal government's civilian agent at the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona and his organization of mail service and post offices in Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush. These highlights were provided in response to Rutgers University's request for summary of "achievements of say sort. He added, however, that his career accomplishments were many and of a wide variety a modest understatement.
Clum was an influential journalist in Arizona Territory, a promoter who introduced citrus fruit to the East Coast a public relations man who extolled the virtues of the West (and the Southern Pacific Railroad), an administrator who often ignored
? made channels with notable success, an experimenting horticulturalist &an early humans' rights activist.
He was a lawyer who practiced little, a ? in medicine, briefly an aspiring minister, an accomplished amateur actor, an orator, a teacher, a Shakespearian scholar & ? ?. He was a man of strong opinions sometimes paranoids, occasionally sub strained by modesty, & certainly outspoken. Still, in apt descriptions by friends, Clum "could charm the birds right out the trees."
Surely there were the times as a government employee when
Clum could have been characterized as an "Iconoclast
possibly a trait inherited from the class of Von Clum's who lived in Bohemia in the late 14th century. Lord Von Chlums was a close friend & admirer of John Hass, a fervid religious reformer, executed for his denunciation of the Catholic hierarchy. The protestant Von Chlums fled to coastal Europe & eventually to the New World to here, now known as Clum's, many settled in New York state.
Clum was born on a farm in Claverack, close to the Hudson River & Catskill Mountains, on Sept., 1, 1851. He was the sixth of nine children (six boys & three girls) of William Henry & Elizabeth van Deusen Clum.
At age 16, he entered Claverack's Hudson River Institute, a semi-military school. Lessons learned there proved very valuable when Clum later served as an Indian Agent. Clum was a student leader, serving for two years as captain of the cadet corps. During summers he worked as a farm laborer in to earn enough money to attend Rangers, which he entered in 1870 with plans to study for the military. Although this was the greatest wish of his parents, Clum never expressed regrets that he ultimately failed to meet his parent's expectation.
Sports life on the Rutgers camp instantly attracted the stocky, muscular & balding freshman. He boxed, wrestled & played in one of the nation's first football games. In 1869, Rutgers and Princeton sent teams of 25 students to meet on a flat filed to kick around a ball and much of the time, each other. Rutgers's first football team captain was a friend of Clum's from New York. Their friendship & Clum's athletic ability qualified him for the "football" team, even though freshman usually could not participate in varsity sports. Chum played every minute of a second football game in 1870, between the two schools. So did everyone else, as Clum recalled, "there was no substitutes, also no quarters or halves. The ball was put in play once & it stayed in play."
Clum wanted to join the rowing team, but did not succeed. He had no friends to facilitate his entry into a sport that was reserved for upperclassmen at the same time, college administrators objected to freshmen participation in an activity considered more traditional and gentlemanly. As a result, Clum took a route be followed often in life-he went his own way. He formed a freshmen crew, He coach and captain, and he rowed stroke. He insisted his fellow crewmen run or row at least three miles every morning in the cool-to-cold, often rainy, New Jersey weather. For Clum an unfortunate result of exposure was inflammatory rheumatism and an end to his rowing career.
Farm work was too painful the following summer, leaving few alternatives to pay for college. Although he told former classmates in 1873 that he hoped to return to complete his education, experience would henceforth be Clum's main teacher. Restless on the farm and thinking dry climate would help his rheumatism, Clum soon had the desire, but not the money, to head west. He found a solution in a newspaper notice that the U.S. War Department was seeking recruits to staff field offices of a new meteorologist's service. After appealing for help from a local congressman, Clum soon received a probationary appointment as an observer-sergeant in the Signal Corps. He passed the required examinations, trained briefly at Fort Whipple (now Fort Meyer) near Washington D.C. & was ordered to report to Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico Territory.
Clum Left Washington in October 1871 for the long rail & stage journey to his new post in a strange land. Dressed as any proper young Eastern gentleman-derby hat, stiff shirt, & neat jacket & trousers-Clum became increasingly self-conscious as he traveled toward the southwestern frontier. He wrote later that he had a great desire, but not the means, to buy a different outfit. In Santa Fe, he finally purchased western clothes, perhaps with money from his first paycheck. Another acquisition, albeit short-lived, was a beard, probably the result of a 20-year-old's desire to look more mature to the Mexicans, soldiers, & teamsters, who made up Santa Fe's population.
Chum's principal duty was to record atmospheric conditions six times a day. He telegraphed them to Washing ton, where they became part of weather reports from 49 other observation stations throughout the country. The daily compilation marked the beginning the US. Weather Bureau. With obvious time to spare, Clum established a school for teaching English - the first school of its type in a territory that had a large Spanish-speaking population. The idea's time had come Clum soon had to employ an assistant.
When the territorial governor had to go to Washington the following summer, Clum was asked to move into the governor's mansion and keep an eye on things. The young weather observer-teacher qualified on two important counts. There weren't many other Americans around for the assignment and little occurred in New Mexico during the hot summer months
A deeply religious man, Clum soon became active in Santa Presbyterian Church, a theological switch since Dutch Reformed congregations were clustered only in New York and New Jersey. As a delegate to the Presbyterian Church's general assembly in spring 1873, Chum made his first return to the East Coast. While visiting Rutgers, he spoke of soon returning to finish his education. But former college classmates, membership in the Dutch Reformed Church and chaotic events in Arizona's Territory became factors that altered Clum's career path.
Appointment as an Indian Agent
Apache had freely roamed across southern Arizona and northern Mexico for hundreds of years. To Apache, the territory was Apache land. They were particularly incensed when the U. S, via the Gadsden Purchase, bought land south of the Gila River in 1853. From an Indian perspective, Mexico had no title to sell homelands and hunting grounds to the U. S. And the U.S. had no right to purchase or occupy those lands, Consequently, Apache had engaged in sporadic warfare to enforce their claim to Apache territory.
By 1873, the U.S. Army intensified its efforts to relocate the Apache to reservations in Arizona and New Mexico. One side was at San Carlos, a desolate expanse of land on the Gila River about the size of Rhode Island in south-central Arizona. Principal occupants were the Arivaipa, Pinal and Coyotero tribes and some Chiricahua Apache, whose late great leader, Cochise, had been promised a own reservation in what today Arizona's southeast corner.
Beyond being treated as intruders on their own land, the Apache at San Carlos were angered over a succession of Indian agents-civilian appointees and Army officers on temporary assignment who had governed neither wisely
nor well. The Apache had indicated their opinion of non-Indian rule by killing two Indian agents and an Anny lieutenant. They had tried to kill a new civilian administrator, who promptly resigned and departed. The Army took over again.
Bureau of Indian Affairs officials decided to install a new agent. In November 1873, a reasonably happy 22-year-old weather observer, resolutely taking daily temperature readings, teaching English and practicing his Spanish. received a letter from the bureau asking whether he'd accept the appointment as agent at San Carlos. Clum, of course, had heard much about Apache depredations in Arizona. Perhaps the very extent of the trouble represented a compelling challenge to him. Within a few days, he accepted the appointment and quickly traveled to Washington, His appoint-ment was dated Feb. 27, 1874
Why Clum? The offer resulted from the ways of Washington during the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant, who had embarked on a "peace policy with Indians Under the poйсу, supervision of Indian reservations was placed in the hands of civilian agents selected from various religion de nominations. In Washington, it seemed reasonable to assign members of the Dutch Reformed Church, concentered in two East Coast states, to oversee aggressive Apache living in the unsettled Southwest. Indian Bureau sought a recruit at Rutgers since there. Clum had recently visited Dutch Reformed....
Rare Article The Life & Times of John P. Clum, The Tombstone Epitaph ~ Tombstone, Arizona
The Tombstone Epitaph.
Special Historical Edition
Tombstone, Cochise County, Arizona Territory
America's Last Frontiersman
The Life and Times of John P. Clum.
John Philip Chum was at the center & political life in the early 1880 founder and first editor of The Tombstone Epitaph, first elected mayor, postmaster, school board chairman, head of a vigilante Hante "safety committee, and vocal opponent a nefarious land speculation scheme, Yet, Clum didn't mention any of these Tombstone activities as achievements when he filled out a college alumni questionnaire in 1930, two years before his death.
Instead, Clam emphasized his once Controversial, later universally commended, service as the federal government's civilian agent at the San Carlos Apache Reservation in Arizona and his organization of mail service and post offices in Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush. These highlights were provided in response to Rutgers University's request for summary of "achievements of say sort. He added, however, that his career accomplishments were many and of a wide variety a modest understatement.
Clum was an influential journalist in Arizona Territory, a promoter who introduced citrus fruit to the East Coast a public relations man who extolled the virtues of the West (and the Southern Pacific Railroad), an administrator who often ignored
? made channels with notable success, an experimenting horticulturalist &an early humans' rights activist.
He was a lawyer who practiced little, a ? in medicine, briefly an aspiring minister, an accomplished amateur actor, an orator, a teacher, a Shakespearian scholar & ? ?. He was a man of strong opinions sometimes paranoids, occasionally sub strained by modesty, & certainly outspoken. Still, in apt descriptions by friends, Clum "could charm the birds right out the trees."
Surely there were the times as a government employee when
Clum could have been characterized as an "Iconoclast
possibly a trait inherited from the class of Von Clum's who lived in Bohemia in the late 14th century. Lord Von Chlums was a close friend & admirer of John Hass, a fervid religious reformer, executed for his denunciation of the Catholic hierarchy. The protestant Von Chlums fled to coastal Europe & eventually to the New World to here, now known as Clum's, many settled in New York state.
Clum was born on a farm in Claverack, close to the Hudson River & Catskill Mountains, on Sept., 1, 1851. He was the sixth of nine children (six boys & three girls) of William Henry & Elizabeth van Deusen Clum.
At age 16, he entered Claverack's Hudson River Institute, a semi-military school. Lessons learned there proved very valuable when Clum later served as an Indian Agent. Clum was a student leader, serving for two years as captain of the cadet corps. During summers he worked as a farm laborer in to earn enough money to attend Rangers, which he entered in 1870 with plans to study for the military. Although this was the greatest wish of his parents, Clum never expressed regrets that he ultimately failed to meet his parent's expectation.
Sports life on the Rutgers camp instantly attracted the stocky, muscular & balding freshman. He boxed, wrestled & played in one of the nation's first football games. In 1869, Rutgers and Princeton sent teams of 25 students to meet on a flat filed to kick around a ball and much of the time, each other. Rutgers's first football team captain was a friend of Clum's from New York. Their friendship & Clum's athletic ability qualified him for the "football" team, even though freshman usually could not participate in varsity sports. Chum played every minute of a second football game in 1870, between the two schools. So did everyone else, as Clum recalled, "there was no substitutes, also no quarters or halves. The ball was put in play once & it stayed in play."
Clum wanted to join the rowing team, but did not succeed. He had no friends to facilitate his entry into a sport that was reserved for upperclassmen at the same time, college administrators objected to freshmen participation in an activity considered more traditional and gentlemanly. As a result, Clum took a route be followed often in life-he went his own way. He formed a freshmen crew, He coach and captain, and he rowed stroke. He insisted his fellow crewmen run or row at least three miles every morning in the cool-to-cold, often rainy, New Jersey weather. For Clum an unfortunate result of exposure was inflammatory rheumatism and an end to his rowing career.
Farm work was too painful the following summer, leaving few alternatives to pay for college. Although he told former classmates in 1873 that he hoped to return to complete his education, experience would henceforth be Clum's main teacher. Restless on the farm and thinking dry climate would help his rheumatism, Clum soon had the desire, but not the money, to head west. He found a solution in a newspaper notice that the U.S. War Department was seeking recruits to staff field offices of a new meteorologist's service. After appealing for help from a local congressman, Clum soon received a probationary appointment as an observer-sergeant in the Signal Corps. He passed the required examinations, trained briefly at Fort Whipple (now Fort Meyer) near Washington D.C. & was ordered to report to Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico Territory.
Clum Left Washington in October 1871 for the long rail & stage journey to his new post in a strange land. Dressed as any proper young Eastern gentleman-derby hat, stiff shirt, & neat jacket & trousers-Clum became increasingly self-conscious as he traveled toward the southwestern frontier. He wrote later that he had a great desire, but not the means, to buy a different outfit. In Santa Fe, he finally purchased western clothes, perhaps with money from his first paycheck. Another acquisition, albeit short-lived, was a beard, probably the result of a 20-year-old's desire to look more mature to the Mexicans, soldiers, & teamsters, who made up Santa Fe's population.
Chum's principal duty was to record atmospheric conditions six times a day. He telegraphed them to Washing ton, where they became part of weather reports from 49 other observation stations throughout the country. The daily compilation marked the beginning the US. Weather Bureau. With obvious time to spare, Clum established a school for teaching English - the first school of its type in a territory that had a large Spanish-speaking population. The idea's time had come Clum soon had to employ an assistant.
When the territorial governor had to go to Washington the following summer, Clum was asked to move into the governor's mansion and keep an eye on things. The young weather observer-teacher qualified on two important counts. There weren't many other Americans around for the assignment and little occurred in New Mexico during the hot summer months
A deeply religious man, Clum soon became active in Santa Presbyterian Church, a theological switch since Dutch Reformed congregations were clustered only in New York and New Jersey. As a delegate to the Presbyterian Church's general assembly in spring 1873, Chum made his first return to the East Coast. While visiting Rutgers, he spoke of soon returning to finish his education. But former college classmates, membership in the Dutch Reformed Church and chaotic events in Arizona's Territory became factors that altered Clum's career path.
Appointment as an Indian Agent
Apache had freely roamed across southern Arizona and northern Mexico for hundreds of years. To Apache, the territory was Apache land. They were particularly incensed when the U. S, via the Gadsden Purchase, bought land south of the Gila River in 1853. From an Indian perspective, Mexico had no title to sell homelands and hunting grounds to the U. S. And the U.S. had no right to purchase or occupy those lands, Consequently, Apache had engaged in sporadic warfare to enforce their claim to Apache territory.
By 1873, the U.S. Army intensified its efforts to relocate the Apache to reservations in Arizona and New Mexico. One side was at San Carlos, a desolate expanse of land on the Gila River about the size of Rhode Island in south-central Arizona. Principal occupants were the Arivaipa, Pinal and Coyotero tribes and some Chiricahua Apache, whose late great leader, Cochise, had been promised a own reservation in what today Arizona's southeast corner.
Beyond being treated as intruders on their own land, the Apache at San Carlos were angered over a succession of Indian agents-civilian appointees and Army officers on temporary assignment who had governed neither wisely
nor well. The Apache had indicated their opinion of non-Indian rule by killing two Indian agents and an Anny lieutenant. They had tried to kill a new civilian administrator, who promptly resigned and departed. The Army took over again.
Bureau of Indian Affairs officials decided to install a new agent. In November 1873, a reasonably happy 22-year-old weather observer, resolutely taking daily temperature readings, teaching English and practicing his Spanish. received a letter from the bureau asking whether he'd accept the appointment as agent at San Carlos. Clum, of course, had heard much about Apache depredations in Arizona. Perhaps the very extent of the trouble represented a compelling challenge to him. Within a few days, he accepted the appointment and quickly traveled to Washington, His appoint-ment was dated Feb. 27, 1874
Why Clum? The offer resulted from the ways of Washington during the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant, who had embarked on a "peace policy with Indians Under the poйсу, supervision of Indian reservations was placed in the hands of civilian agents selected from various religion de nominations. In Washington, it seemed reasonable to assign members of the Dutch Reformed Church, concentered in two East Coast states, to oversee aggressive Apache living in the unsettled Southwest. Indian Bureau sought a recruit at Rutgers since there. Clum had recently visited Dutch Reformed....