BIOGRAPHIES: P. Gustav BARUM, Elk Mound Township, Dunn Co., WI

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Submitted by:  Laura Abood <wabood@msn.com>  11 May 2005
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P. Gustav Barum, who is engaged in general farming and dairying in
the town of Elk Mound (Section 9), has had a long and busy career and
has accomplished much through determination and perseverance.  He was
born in Barum, Norway, Feb. 13, 1852, son of Peter H. and Martha
(Johnson) Barum.  In 1865 the family came to the United States to
found a new home in a land of better opportunity, and for five years
they resided in the town of Wheaton, Chippewa County, on Big Elk
Creek.  In 1870 they moved into Dunn County, taking a homestead of
160 acres of wild land in the town of Colfax.  There, making a
clearing, Peter H. Barum built a log cabin and log barns and began
the development of a farm, in which task he continued until his death
in 1889.  His wife survived him about 15 years, finally passing away
in 1904 at the home of her son P. Gustav.  There were five children
in the family, but the only ones now living are the subject of this
sketch, and his sister Annie, the latter being now Mrs. Ole Johnson
of Eau Claire.  P. Gustav Barum attended public school in Norway and
also two terms in Chippewa County, Wisconsin.  He remained with his
parents, becoming his father's assistant and so continuing until
1870, when the father suffering from a stroke, the brunt of the hard
work and the main part in the development and management of the farm
fell upon the shoulders of Gustav.  In the year of the great Chicago
fire, 1871, Mr. Barum went to Chicago and there worked in the
Boughton Machine shop until the middle of the following summer, when
he returned to Wisconsin.  Besides clearing, grubbing and breaking
his own land, or that of his parents, he at times did similar work
for others, and so kept constantly busy, having as many as five teams
of oxen working at one time.  Also, before his first marriage in 1884
he spent 17 winters in logging camps in the woods, and one winter
after, and during eight winters of that time he drove a four-horse
team.  He also worked 13 summers in sawmills.  After his father's
death he conducted the home farm for a few years or until it was
sold.  In 1892 he bought his present farm of 80 acres in Section 9,
town of Elk Mound, covered at the time with heavy hardwood timber. 
Making a clearing, he built a frame house into which he and his
family moved, including his aged mother, who came to live with him at
that time and remained an inmate of his home until her death.  As
soon as he had settled on the place he commenced the clearing and
grubbing of the land, a long, hard and tedious task, but in time
accomplished with a good farm as a result, which is the second one he
has developed.  Six acres of land, however, he left in timber for the
sake of a supply of wood.  For many years Mr. Barum grew tobacco, but
of late years he has given his attention to dairying and general crop
farming, not tobacco raising, and the tobacco shed he constructed
when he started in that business he later converted into a stock
barn.  He has a herd of grade Holstein cattle and is today one of the
substantial citizens of his town, a position he has worked hard to
attain, and his activity for so many years in the important
industries of lumbering and farming, entitle him to be considered as
one of the creators and upbuilders of the county, a useful and
necessary cog in the great machine of modern civilization.  As
intimated Mr. Barum has been more than once married:  first in 1884,
to Tillie Clauson, who died after a short married life in 1888,
leaving two children:  Annie, now Mrs. Ole Eng of Leroy, Minn., and
the mother of six children; and Oscar, a farmer in the town of Elk
Mound, who married Ethel Parker and has two children.  Mr. Barum
married secondly Mary Carlson, who died in 1909, leaving one child,
Martin G., now living with his father and conducting the home farm. 
The family are Lutherans in religious faith.

Transcribed from the "History of Dunn County Wisconsin, 1925" pages
915-916
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