Anthony Schumaker

Anthony Schumaker was a druggist and community leader in early Grand Ledge. We learn more about him in these excerpts from a 1906 biography:

“HON. ANTHONY B. SCHUMAKER, one of the leading business men of the city of Grand Ledge, and ex-member of the Michigan state senate, is a native of Prussia, where he was born June 1, 1848. His father was a lieutenant in the artillery division of the Prussian army, but resigned his commission and learned the trade of ship carpenter. In 1853 he came to America, leaving his family in Prussia.

Anthony was about six years of age when he came with his mother to join his father in the United States. He attended the schools in Branch county and thereafter he worked for his board for three years while attending the high school in Coldwater. He then secured a clerical position in the drug and grocery store of E. R. Clarke & Company of Coldwater.

In 1872 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, at 222 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.

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. 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. 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.

Mr. Schumaker is a man of progressive ideas and much initiative power; he has taken a public-spirited concern in all that touches the general welfare of his home city, county and state. 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 has passed the degrees of the blue lodge, chapter and council in the Masonic fraternity, and is also identified with the Knights of Pythias.

September 21, 1876, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Schumaker to Miss Elizabeth A. Raleigh, who was a lineal descendant of Sir Walter Raleigh. Mrs. Schumaker’s death occurred on March 5, 1888. At their home at 226 West Jefferson, they raised two children: Charles, who was drowned in the Grand river, July 8, 1898, at the age of nineteen years; he was a student in high school when he met his untimely death. He was a particularly bright youth, and gave 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.”