Following is one of the Biographies and Stories which where gathered by Charles Sumner McKamy in the 1950s for publication in a Crawford County History Book. Unfortunately he passed away before the book was published.
I was born January 28, 1879 at the foothills of Black Forest on the Province of Baden, Germany. My Father was a wagon maker, My Mother a midwife. I came, with my parents, to America in 1883, locating in West New Baden, Clinton County, Illinois, living there until 1888, when we moved to Mascoutah, Illinois, living there until 1891, when we moved to Belleville, Illinois.
I attended school until I was twelve years of age, then started to learn the baking trade at the Merck Bakery in 1892 and worked at this bakery until 1916, having worked at the bakery trade twenty-one years in one bakery. I started in at a wage of $4.00 and board while learning the trade and I sang that 21 years with the Cathedral Choir at Belleville, moving to Robinson I bought the Kanz & McAllister Baking Company business on January 1, 1916. I did not know any one here when I came, but went to work to make my first million and still working, after over sixty years in the baking trade.
I belong to the Knights of Columbus and the Rotary Club. Have led the singing at the Illinois Bakers Convention for forty-five years and have been the song leader of the Robinson Rotary Club for twenty-eight years, and the song leader at the St. Elizabeth Church in Robinson since coming to Robinson.
After coming to Robinson I bought a second hand safe which I have been trying to fill with "dough", not the bread dough, but have never been able to do it.
The finest Rotary song I ever knew is "Friend of Mine" in which the last verse reads as follows:
"So when the night falls tremulous
And the last lamp burns low,
And one of us or both of us
The Long lone road must go
Look with your dear old eyes in mine
Give me a hand shake true
Whatever fate our souls await
Let me be there, Let me be there,
There with you."
I sang this song at the Rotary Conference at Cairo, Illinois in 1935.
Josephine Inagin, my wife, was born in Belleville and we were married August 13, 1901 and she had been my constant companion since and to her is the credit of our success in life. We have two sons, Arthur and Roland, who succeeded me in business.
Agnes, our daughter, who is the wife of Glen Skidmore, owns and operates a Gift Store on the south side of the public square in Robinson. We have nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
I have been in the baking business since 1893, which is sixty years.
My oldest sister, Louisa, lives in Carlyle, Clinton County, Illinois and she will be eighty years old in May 1954. She and I were both born in southern German. We both outlived our two younger sisters who were born in the U.S.A.
Mrs. Hummell's Father was Charles Inagin and her Mother was Maria Emge Inagin and she has an unusually interesting family history, which can be traced back for a period of more than 220 years, the Moore family married into the Inagin family in the year 1732 which traces her family history back probably longer than any other person in our County. She is a descendant of Shields Moore, who came from Wales in 1732 and settled in Baltimore, Maryland, where he and J.C. Risdon engaged in the sale of gold and silver bullion, jointly as the firm of Moore & Risdon, with a branch office in London, which trade they continued for about twenty years. This business was discontinued at the outbreak of he Revolutionary War, they being espoused to the Whig cause and they placed three vessels in the colonial service and were the first to whom the Government issued letters of "Marquee and Reprisal".
Some of their family came from Baltimore, Md. To N. Carolina and then to Georgia, some 100 years ago and others came to St. Clair County, Illinois east of Belleville. The Moores up to the time of the Revolutionary War were in creed Episcopalians, later they left that church and the family became divided, some Baptist, Methodists, Camelites and others Quakers.