Photograph courtesy of Richard L. Overy
Data source is Douglas Mumma, 2123 Farmington Place, Livermore, CA 94550, email = doug@mumma.org
Data source is Laurie Overy Stevens, BLStevens@charter.net, March 2004
1860 Census IL, Schuyler Co., Brooklyn Twp., Brooklyn P.O. dwelling 1540
James Mathena, 28, farmer, $500 personal, b: IN
Rebecca " , 26, b: OH
Josephine " , 7, b: IL, attends school
John H. " , 5, b: IL, atends school
Bellam " , female, 3, b: IL
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
John & Josie's marriage record is listed in McDonough Co., IL:, which can be accessed on-line at
http://www.sos.state.il.us/cgi-bin/archives/marriage.s
GROOM BRIDE COUNTY DATE LIC#
MUMMA, JOHN MATHENA, JOSIE MC DONOUGH 11/04/1875 00000539
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1880 Census, IL, Mc Donough Co., Bethel, twp., Page 287C, ED 133, dwelling 233
Mumma, John, 30, farmer, b: PA/PA/PA
" , Josephine, wife, 26, keeping house, b: IL/IN/OH
" , Anna F., dau, 3/12, Feb, IL/PA/IL
Horner, David A., border, 45, book agent, b: PA/PA/PA
1900 Census for Little Blue Township, Adams County, NE p. 60A, 16 June 1900
Mumma, John, head, b. Dec 1849, 50, m: 25 yrs., b. PA/PA/ PA rents
" , Josephine, wife, b. Sep 1854, 45, m: 25 yrs, 1 child, 1 living, b. IL/IN/ OH
" , Marie G., dau, b. Jul 1885, age 14, b. NE/PA/IL
Piskna, John, laborer, Dec 1881, age 19, b. Bohemia/Bohemia/Bohemina
The following story was shared by Laurie Overy Stevens as told to her by her grandmother,
-----------------------------------------
"The story of my Mumma family and the tornado is a tragic one, but it was not told in the papers that you have read the same way that my grandmother remembers it. My grandmother, Velva Overy, is the daughter-in-law of Anna Overy. Anna was the only remaining Mumma from the tornado, daughter of John and Josephine Mumma and sister of Gertrude. My grandma tells the story of how Gertrude and Ray Quig were childhood sweethearts and longed to be married for several years. John Mumma refused to accept the engagement of the two and therefore they never married. Gertrude and her mother "worked" on the father for well over 2 years until he one day, May 24, 1903 agreed that the two could marry and invited Ray Quig for a dinner to celebrate the engagement and agreement by the father. Word was sent for Ray Quig to attend, but he could not be found until around 3:00 that afternoon. He arrived at the Mumma home for the dinner, they sat down together and the tornado hit the home with devastation. The fact that the two had been kept apart by the father makes this story even more dramatic. This story comes straight from Anna Mumma Overy, so I presume it to be accurate."
-----------------------------------------
The following newspaper article describes the death of John, his wife Josephine and their daughter, Gertrude during a terrible Tornado that struck Pauline, NE where they lived. They were having an engagement party for Gertrude. The other three people killed were her fianance, Ray Quig, Florence Palmer and her brother, John Palmer. The Palmers were friends of the Mummas. [ ED Note: The Palmers lived 3 doors away in the 1900 census]
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Adams County Democrat
Friday Morning May 29 1903
-------------------------------------
AN ADAMS COUNTY TWISTER.
Death and Destruction in its Trail Pauline,
Bladen, Norman and Campbell
all Suffer.
The first serious touch of the 1903 season came to Adams county Sunday evening, dealing destruction and leaving grief in its trail.
Sunday had been a beautiful day and toward evening it clouded up. At Hastings a great rain came on about six o'clock, several inches of water falling in two hours, but there was very little wind. The wind was doing deadly work elsewhere.
About six o'clock it gathered force and struck at John Miller's, two miles south of Ayr, taking house and barn, passing to Watterman's, Parks', the Reader school house, smashing and crashing everything in its course. It was a cyclone of the latest improved pattern, taking a width of about seventy rods and taking everything in its way. It raised just east of Reader's, going in a southeasterly direction, and was not heard again. But there was plenty of other cyclones abroad that evening. About the same hour, people living southeast of Pauline noticed signs of a terrific storm coming up in the south from Lawrence, where it did some damage. It struck Chas. Daum's place first, unroofing his house, smashing his barn and then lifted going north on the farm of W. B. Sheldon, on section fifteen, where the family of John Mumma lived. At the time the cyclone struck Mumma's house, there were present Mr. and Mrs. John Mumma, and their eighteen-year-old daughter, Gertrude. They had three visitors, Miss Flora Palmer, age 14, and her brother John Palmer, age 17, also Ray Quig, age 19. The storm picked up the house and people, carrying them a distance of two hundred yards and hurling them to the ground with such fury as to crush everything in and about the house. None of the six victims lived to tell the tale and it is altogether probable that death was instantaneous. The bodies were horribly mangled and scattered all over the place, together with bodies of domestic animals and piles of wreckage, machinery, wagons and horses.
After doing Its deadly work here, the terror passed north to L. Herman's where it seemed to rise and disappear and no further damages was done except to telegraph and telephone poles and wires.
An eye witness to the Pauline catastrophe describes it in this way:
Heavy clouds gathered over toward Lawrence and seemed to move north about six o'clock. It seemed to gather force as it moved on. fences, outhouses, cats and dogs were flying in the air when it struck Chas. Damn's place on section 25, in Little Blue, about three miles southeast of Mumma's.
Mr. Daum saw it in time to notify his family and then all ran into a storm cellar, and had just secured the door when the tornado arrived. His house was unroofed and the barn completely demolished, The storm took in a path of about eight rods wide and proceeded in a most direct line for the Mumma place until it struck the house, which it picked up and carried high in the air. The house appeared to be suspended in the sky like a toy from a ceiling. It was sent whirling and whizzing about like a top. It suddenly took an upward tendency of fifty feet and then was shattered with apparently the same ease that a man would crush a cracker in the palm of his hand: The people and contents-were hurled with, great force down in a deep ravine, which was already strewn with wreckage and dead animals. Nothing but a stone foundation was left to indicate where the house had stood, and the large beautiful orchard was a twisted mass of broken trees. As there was no windows on the south side of the house it was impossible for the occupants to observe the approaching storm. All the trees about the place were twisted to the ground or uprooted. Carcasses of dead horses, cows and hogs were scattered throughout the entire ravine and the only sign of life about the place was a pig with a broken back and the family dog. The dog was a large shepherd and lay on some debris close to the dying pig. The wind wrenched the wheels off the wagon and twisted every spoke, out of the wheels. One of the hubs got tangled up in a barbed wire fence and when the storm subsided, the hub, with hundreds of feet of wire fence wrapped neatly in a bundle, was found in a draw half a mile away. A heavy rain followed the storm and oceans of water fell.
The Democrat's Pauline correspondent gives an account of the funerals, which occurred Monday. Early burial was necessary owing to the mangled condition of the bodies.
Monday the locality was visited by sightseers from all around the country. Pieces of wood, iron, etc., were carried away as souvenirs of the frightful catastrophe. It is no easy thing to estimate the loss of property.
W. B. Sheldon, of this city, who owned the farm where the greatest damage was done, was out of town and did not return until Monday. Mr. Sheldon and Mr. Mumma were engaged in jointly raising the stock and had accumulated considerably, most of which was killed and maimed.
