Gaylord E. Sumner Biography


	This biography appears on pages 1709-1710 in "History of South 
	Dakota" by Doane Robinson, Vol. II (1904) and was scanned, 
	OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net.

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	GAYLORD E. SUMNER, cashier and one of the principal stockholders 
of the Stockgrowers' Bank, of Fort Pierre, is a native of the old Empire 
state and is in direct line of descent from the well-known Sumner 
family, of Boston, the distinguished statesman, Charles Sumner, being of 
the same line. 

	The subject was born in Belfast, Allegany county, New York, on the 
2d of November, 1870, and is a son of Newton and Eliza A. (Swift) 
Sumner, both of whom were likewise born and reared in New York state, 
while the former is one of the prominent and influential farmers of 
Allegany county, where his entire life has been passed. He has been 
continuously incumbent of some public office in the township of Belfast 
from the attaining of his legal majority to the present, and is sixty-
three years of age at the time of this writing, in 1904. The great-
great-grandfather of the subject in the agnatic line removed from 
Massachusetts into northern New York as early as 1759, crossing Lake 
Champlain on the ice and losing a large amount of his household goods 
through the breaking of the ice. He lived in sound of the guns of Fort 
Ticonderoga, and also the sounds of the battles of Lakes Champlain and 
George, during the war of the Revolution. Hiram Sumner, grandfather of 
the subject of this review, was reared on the old ancestral homestead in 
northern New York, and later became the first settler in Allegany 
county, that state, cutting his way through the dense forests to the 
site of the present town of Angelica, that county, the same being the 
oldest town in said county. The maternal grandfather of the subject was 
Cullen Dean Swift, of English descent and direct from the renowned Dean 
Swift, of the Church of England, in whose honor he was named. He was one 
of the old-time circuit riders of the Methodist Episcopal church in New 
York, riding on horseback through the woods from church to church and 
being absent several weeks on his rounds as a clergyman of his church in 
the pioneer section in which he so zealously labored. 

	Gaylord E. Sumner attended the district school in the neighborhood 
of his home until he had attained the age of fourteen years and in the 
meanwhile lent his quota of boyish aid in the work of the home farm. He 
entered Houghton Seminary, at Houghton, New York, where he completed a 
commercial course and was graduated in the high school of his home town 
of Belfast. In the same year, 1892, he came to Fort Pierre, South 
Dakota, to accept the position of bookkeeper in the Stockgrowers' Bank, 
while in 1893 he was made assistant cashier and in 1895 elected cashier 
of the institution, which incumbency he has ever since retained. Up to 
1897 he gave his undivided attention to the affairs of the bank, and in 
1898 he became one of the incorporators of the Empire State Cattle 
Company, which now has a capital of thirty thousand dollars, while it 
holds by lease one hundred and sixty-five thousand acres of government 
land on the Cheyenne reservation, having fenced this large tract in one 
enclosure for pasturage purposes. He is still one of the stockholders in 
the company, whose operations are conducted upon an extensive scale. In 
1900 Mr. Sumner made a trip to Texas and assisted James Philip, of Fort 
Pierre, in shipping nine thousand head of cattle from that state to 
Pierre, and in the summer of 1902 he went up into the mountains of 
Idaho, and, with a partner, purchased five hundred head of horses, which 
they shipped by rail to Cheyenne, Wyoming, from which point they drove 
them through over the trail of Fort Pierre. He now owns ten thousand 
dollars' worth of cattle on the range, and with Mr. Millett owns a 
controlling interest in the bank, whose business has been built up to 
its present admirable condition principally through their well-directed 
efforts, the institution being capitalized for twenty-five thousand 
dollars and having a surplus of fifteen thousand dollars. In politics 
Mr. Sumner gives an unqualified allegiance to the Republican party, and 
in May, 1902, he was elected mayor of Fort Pierre, serving until 1904 
and giving a most business-like and progressive administration. Both he 
and his wife are prominent and valued members of the Congregational 
church in Fort Pierre, and also identified with the Christian Endeavor 
Society of the same. Fraternally he holds affiliation with the Modern 
Woodmen of America and the Ancient Order of United Workmen. 

	In Fort Pierre, on the 17th of June, 1896, Mr. Sumner was united 
in marriage to Miss Ida May Ricketts, who was born in Charlestown, 
Illinois, being a daughter of Joshua and Louise Ricketts, the former of 
whom died when she was a child, as the result of injuries received in 
battle during the Civil war. The family came to South Dakota in 1882.