Chauncey Irving Gumaer

by Peter Ogden

Title

Chauncey Irving Gumaer

Artist

Peter Ogden

Medium

Photograph - Cabinet Card Photograph

Description

This is a copy of a partially restored cabinet card photograph of my maternal great grandfather, Chauncey Irving Gumaer of Gumaer Manor, Guymard Lake, Orange County, New York, 1860-1923. This photo was taken in 1892 by Nast & Company photography studio, 1624 Curtis Street, Denver Colorado.
At the time that this photo was taken the adventurous and ambitious young Chauncey was seeking his fortune in the Colorado gold mines in the Rocky Mountains. Chauncey owned three placer gold mines near Alma: The Alhambra, Tanner Boy and The Three Rivers. Around the time that this photo was taken Chauncey was a mining engineering student at the Colorado School of Mines. While in Colorado Chauncey's father, Peter E. Gumaer, died unexpectedly forcing Chauncey to return to his native Gumaer Manor in Orange County, New York to manage the ancestral Gumaer family properties including large tracts of land, privately owned Guymard Lake and the Guymard Lead and Zinc Mines. Chauncey married local sweetheart Georgianna Gumaer who died prematurely; after Georgianna's death Chauncey married Alma Pettersson, a beautiful Swedish mail order bride from Frodinge, Sweden. Chauncey and Alma bore two beautiful children: Lucile, Hellion, Mildread and Alma who reached maturity. Late in life Chauncey became embroiled in a vicious lawsuit with the Erie Railroad, the largest corporation in America at the time, when the railroad's expansion threatened to destroy his mines and ancestral mansion, Gumaer Manor. After many years of battling the Erie Chauncey became one of extremely few litigants to ever win a lawsuit against the omnipotent Erie. Regrettably the stress of the Erie lawsuit led to the premature death of Chauncey and nearly bankrupted him. Years of growing up in a litigious, acrimonious home atmosphere also influenced Chauncey's children and most of his grandchildren to become litigious and argumentative. The descendants of Lucile Gumaer Ogden were the most respectable, prudent, ethical and successful of Chauncey's grandchildren; all of Chauncey's other grandchildren, during the mid twentieth century married far beneath their class [the few who married] ran off to become itinerant hippie flower children, communists, wandering mendicants, disciples of despotic bizarre religious cults, and beatniks. Animosity between the Gumaer grandchildren became extremely heated and divisive.
The Gumaers, having settled in the vicinity of Gumaer Manor in the 1680s, descended from the once ancient aristocratic Guimar family of Guimaraes, the medieval capital of Portugal and from southwestern coastal France near LaRochelle. This is the true, abbreviated history of my paternal grandparent family of origin. --Peter Gumaer Ogden October 8, 2020. NOTE: The third generation of Chauncey's offspring, his great grandchildren, have for the most part far exceeded their parents' circumstances and bounced back as educated, responsible, happy, prosperous, admirable citizens like their Huguenot ancestors.
2022 Update: To the consternation of the many of the Gumaer descendants it has recently been revealed via the Minisink Valley Historical Society archives that the Gumaer family in the Peenpack / Guymard Lake vicinity owned a great many black African slaves from the 1700s through the mid 1800s. These slaves were used to construct Guymard Turnpike and the gated exclusive community of Guymard Lake where the last resident of the Gumaer family, Grace F. Woodard maintains an expensive luxurious home. This home, which has been extensively remodeled recently was once used to house Gumaer slaves. The slave legacy of the historic colonial Gumaer family of Orange County has been largely suppressed and is largely unknown and unpublished.
Those of us in the Gumaer family who are progressive and believe in social justice believe that the affluents Gumaers, especially those still occupying properties that were essentially plantations [like Guymard Lake] should sell their properties and provide reparations to local documented descendants of the Gumaer slaves such as the Cuffee ["Man Cuffee"] family of Orange County, New York.

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October 8th, 2020

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