Joseph F. Rumsey. The American Ice and Oil Company of Oklahoma City is one of a number of important industries that have been established in the capital during the past five years and have furnished the nucleus for the development of a great industrial center there. The most noteworthy feature of the business of this company is the manufacture of cottonseed products. Its plant, located at 301 South Compress Street, was originally a brewery and ice plant. In the summer of 1911 two young men of great enterprise, with a shrewd foresight as to future development, brought their capital to Oklahoma City, bought the old brewery, organized the American Ice & Oil Company, and at once started to remodel the building and introduce the complicated machinery necessary for their particular needs. The president of the company since its organization has been Joseph F. Rumsey, while his brother, Richard D. Rumsey, is secretary and treasurer. The plant occupies ground 140 by 150 feet, and of its original facilities they have retained only the ice plant, which is operated chiefly during the summer months. The main business is the manufacture of cottonseed oil and cold-pressed cottonseed cake. This has the distinction of being the third cold-pressed mill built in the state, and has been in operation since 1911, and though a new business, has been developed to a point of successful permanence and flourishing prosperity. The business is now an important institution considered as an asset to Oklahoma City’s industrial prosperity. From twenty-five to thirty people are employed, including several traveling salesmen and seed buyers. The cottonseed products have their chief markets in the states of Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri, while the “linters” are sold for the manufacturing of guncotton, at the present time a desideratum to the warring nations abroad.

The president of this company, Joseph F. Rumsey, is a young man not yet thirty years of age. He was born in Chicago in 1888, a son of J. Frank and Martha (Downing) Rumsey. His father, who was born in New York State and died in 1908, was for forty years a member of the Chicago Board of Trade. The mother died in 1893. The Rumsey family originated in Wales, but was established in the United States before the Revolutionary war. The Downing family was among the early Quaker peoples of Pennsylvania, located at Dowington in Westchester County of that state. Mr. Rumsey’s maternal grandfather Downing was a prominent factor in the iron industry of Pennsylvania during the early days, and before the iron resources of the United States had been developed to a point where it was possible to supply the American demand he was in business as an importer of iron. For years he served as a director of the Bank of North America at Philadelphia, an institution founded by the eminent revolutionary financier, John Morris.

Joseph F. Rumsey is a young man of broad and liberal education, of thorough business ability as the success of his company demonstrates, and has contributed not a little to the welfare of Oklahoma City by establishing the business above described. He was educated at the Lake Forest Academy in Chicago, in the Hotchkiss School at Lakeville, Connecticut, and after this preparatory training entered Yale University, where he was graduated B. A. in 1911. Within a few weeks after his graduation he was in Oklahoma City arranging the details for the organization and establishment of the American Ice & Oil Company.

Mr. Rumsey married, November 4, 1915, Mary Baker, of Weatherford, Texas, a daughter of Alice Blake and John Daniel Baker.