Who Was Clemmie Gum?



Land near the old Baugh farm in Old Millersburg



     Clemmie Gum(m) was born Clementine W. Baugh on April 25, 1857. Although she would one day give birth to a boy named Frank Avent Gumm, and come to be known as Judy Garland’s grandmother, back in the 1850s she was just a little Southern girl, growing up on a farm. 

     Early in my research, I realized that if I was truly to know who Judy Garland’s father was, I needed to know about his mother. For a while it seemed her history had been lost to time. But Clemmie was born before the Civil War and died in the 19^th century, long before Judy was born; she seemed of another time and not at all connected to the Gumm/Garland family.

     So who was Clemmie Gumm? When I began my research, I pictured Clemmie as the sweet, sainted mother who died too young. Frank was eight when she died. I wondered if Judy reminded him of his mother. Yet as time went on, I found that Clemmie was far from perfect and often not at all likeable. 



Joseph Lawrence Baugh,
Clemmie's oldest brother.
Joe was someone she
later relied on when
in trouble.



     Clemmie was the youngest child of Mary Ann and John Baugh’s brood of eleven. Her oldest sister, Caledonia, died as a child. By the time Clemmie was born, her oldest brother, Joe, was already married and several other sibblings were courting. Her closest sibling, Charlie, was six years her senior. For the first five years of her life, she was the baby of the house.

      The real surprise about Clemmie was that she was crippled. This information came to me through an 1893 court case regarding her mother’s will. In her testimony Clemmie, “Mrs. Gum,” refers to herself as “afflicted.” A doctor also testified to the fact that she was born with this condition. It was also stated that her disability hindered her from doing much in the way of physical work or staying on her feet. Whether this “affliction” was a kind of scoliosis or a complete inability to walk is unknown.



Clemmie Baugh Gum's eldest sister, Bettie
Baugh White. Taken at the end of the war,
you can see the pain and hardship she has
suffered. Bettie seems to have been
protective of Clemmie.
(courtesy White Family,  Vol 1)



     Often, during my research, I wondered about Clemmie’s appearance.  Was she fair with light, golden hair and blue eyes or was she dark-haired with dark eyes? Studying the features of her siblings, half were fair and the other half dark. As of yet, no pictures of her have been found.

     Clemmie’s parents had come to Tennessee from Virginia when they were quite young. Her father worked hard to earn money to purchase land and slaves. At the time of her birth, the family owned approximately 300 acres of land and 32 slaves. A good portion of these persons were children of the original African-Americans the family had purchased at auction or through other members of the family. After the war, a few of these persons stayed on with the family.



Clemmie could have been
a little girl, very much like
this child. (Taken Oaklands
House Museum Civil War
Reinactment 2005 (c)
Michelle Russell)



   Clemmie was five years old when the Civil War broke out. The family was living in Old Millersburg at the time, a small community, just southwest of Murfreesboro, nestled among the hills. During the early part of the war, Clemmie’s elder sister, Mattie, died after giving birth to a baby. Clemmie’s mother, Mary Ann took the baby and Mattie’s son, Rollie Howland, into their home. The baby died, but Rollie, who was about three at the time, remained with them until he was sixteen Clemmie and Rollie grew up like brother and sister. She called him “Buddy” and he called her “Sister Clemmie.” However, as the years passed, it seems Clemmie grew to resent Buddy. He was very smart and her mother loved to brag about him. This irked Clemmie no end. She  found fault with Rollie often enough and seems to have been quite jealous of him. 



     While there are no eye-witness records of what the Baugh family experienced during the war,  there are enough records about the small area they lived in to imagine what they experienced. I was also able to find peole whose great grandparents had lived there during the war and who shared with me stories handed down through the generations.



One battle was fought just outside the Baugh home.
The children must have been terrified. (Photo taken
Oaklands House Museum reinactment.
(c) Michelle
Russell



     When the war began, the women bid their men folks goodbye, imagining that they would back in a few months, claiming victory against the Union. Although a few men remained behind, the women were basically in charge of the children, slaves and the farms. Eventually, the battles of the war moved west to Tennessee. The Union realized that Tennessee was a key state because the railroad ran through it, carrying goods from north to south and east to west. In 1862, one of the largest and most important battles of the war was fought in Rutherford County. After that, the Yankees never left. Yet, even before this, both Union and Confederate troops rode out to local farms and took whatever goods they could find. Frequently, families found they were short of food. Young Clemmie must have known a great deal of hardship as a young child.

    Clemmie was eight at the conclusion of the war. When she was ten, her father purchased a large house in Murfreesboro for them to live in. When she was thirteen, he died suddenly. A few years later, Mary Ann Baugh took daughter Clemmie and grandson Rollie to stay on her deceased father, Benjamin Marable’s farm. It was here that Clemmie met Will T. Gum, the man she was to marry.

  

    Will T. Gum must have been a handsome young man. He and Clemmie put their dreams together. Because of her disability, it seems Clemmie’s family assumed she would never marry. In addition, the question remain as to whether Will Gum married Clemmie for her money, hoping to have an easy life. In the long run, their life was quite difficult. But that story is for another time. It is told in my book, “From Tennessee to Oz, Part 2.”

     With all the difficult times that Will Gum had, and all the apparent gossip about him, Clemmie would never say a bad thing about her husband. She always stood up for him. Her gratitude to him for loving and marrying her was great and she was forever faithful to him.

     During the eight years of their marriage, Will and Clemmie had six children. Their first child, a girl, died at birth. She was followed by one girl and four boys: Mary, Robert Emmett, Frank Avent, William Wade and Allie Richardson. No doubt, the birth of all these healthy babies, considering Clemmie’s condition, was looked on with great surprise by some of her siblings and others. Clemmie maintained a rather feisty attitude toward anyone who had anything to say against she or her husband.

    Clemmie’s mother, Mary Ann Marable Baugh, with whom they lived (the same house her father bought after the war), died in 1892, at the age of seventy-nine. Following her death, the family went to live in a small three-room building which Mary Ann had willed to Clemmie. Will was not able to support them and three years later, on October 28, 1895, at the age of thirty-eight, Clemmie Baugh Gum died.

     During the years of my research, I worked very hard to try to find the cause of Clemmie Gum's death. I thought perhaps the descendants of the doctor who treated the family might have left some records but received no answer to my quiry. There were not notations as to the cause of her death in the family Bible either. I learned that many funeral homes kept records that included 'cause of death.' There was one big funeral home which would have handled Clemmie, but which had been split between the two owners. I tracked the information given on them and finally found a phone number for them. I held out hope that at last I would find an answer, but alas I was told that in 1960 all their records had been burnt. All that history was lost!

     Meanwhile, I learned that cemeteries also sometimes had notations. Again, I learned there had been a fire and all the original records were gone. So many dead ends. Rutherford County had not required death records until 1913; it was rare to find any record for cause of death. Some of the main causes at this time were: influenza, tuberculosis and diseases of the stomach. It is anyone’s guess as to why she died.

     Hard as I tried to like Clemmie, I found that she was not always likeable. I found her to be jealous, somewhat selfish and, as her mother grew older, mean to her. Her disability and the frustration and pain she had may have caused some of this behavior. Clemmie lived a good, but sad life, and as we know, gave birth to a young man with a great sense of humor and a beautiful voice. Knowing what a likeable young man Frank Gumm was, and what a beautiful voice and great sense of humor he had, we can only guess that some of these qualities came from his mother, Clemmie W. Gum. 



In my next blog, I will introduce you to the Baugh family, and give some hint as to the excitement that kept me on this journey of discovery for eight years.





Frank Avent Gumm in Grand Rapids,
Minnesota when he was about
thirty-two years old.
(courtesy Judy Garland Museum)

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First Trip to Murfreesboro Tennessee

       Four days after 9/11 and the horrific attack on the World Trade Center where over 3,000 lives were lost, I took my first trip to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the birthplace of Judy Garland’s father.

For the past three years, I had been a temporary worker at the World Financial Center, which stands on the Hudson River, just behind The World Trade Center site. The two sites were connected by a walkway over the Westside Highway. Monday through Friday I traveled to New York on the New Jersey PATH train with people who worked in those buildings; I’d walked through the halls with them, shopped with them and eaten lunch with them. Now, the towers were gone and so many were dead.  

Standing on Broadway, opposite such familiar streets and buildings, my eyes rested on the most devastating site I had ever seen – the smoldering ruins of the Trade Center. Trembling, I told the policeman who was urging the crowds on that I had worked there and needed a moment. He waved a Red Cross worker over and together, they tried to comfort me. In the midst of all this, I told them that I wanted to help somehow, but had not been chosen as a volunteer. I also mentioned that I had been planning to produce an historical musical recording, but it didn’t seem very important now. "There are different ways to help," they said, "Will  this recording lift people’s spirits? If it will, you should go ahead and do it." 

Sid Luft outside the Judy Garland
Birthplace with Carissa Farina as
Baby Gumm and Alicia Perrotto as
Jimmie Gumm (1997).



The planned recording was “Made in America – Vaudeville Songs,” twenty-two songs that Judy Garland (then Baby Gumm) and her family had sung in vaudeville (1895-1930). Between 1995 and 1997, as a volunteer project for The Judy Garland Birthplace, I had researched the music. The ten songs I started with had become one hundred. In addition, I had almost completed my mission to find the sheet music for these songs. Co-author of "Young Judy," had even been kind enough to give me a copy of a rare song by Ethel Gumm, “Deep, Deep in My Heart.”



For the seventy-fifth anniversary of Judy Garland’s birth, a living history program was performed in the Gumm’s front parlor. Along with the host of fans attending our seven performances, guests included Judy’s ex-husband, Sid Luft, her son, Joe, some Gumm cousins and even a few of the original Munchkins from The Wizerd of Oz.

Then, early in 2001, I decided that the best way to preserve these songs was to record them. Now, with the NYC policeman and the Red Cross Worker’s encouragement, I made the decision to go ahead with the project. But before we began, there was one thing I wanted to do – visit the town where Judy Garland’s father, Frank Gumm, was born and find out what his musical influences had been. Two days later, I was on a bus to Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

To keep one’s sanity during this terrible time, you had to find some purpose. There was a constant feeling of fear in the air. That first week after the terrorist attack, for the first time in sixty years or more, there were no flights in the U.S. There was a strange sense of quiet in the air. I boarded a bus and headed south. The route to Tennessee took us through Washington, DC, over the Potomac River into Virginia, and right past the unbelievable wreckage of the Pentagon. The gaping black hole was shocking; the Pentagon had once been thought impenetrable.

Eighteen hours later, I arrived in Nashville, where I rented a car, and headed thirty-five miles southeast to the lovely little town where Judy’s father, Frank Gumm, was born 1886. In 2001, Murfreesboro was still surrounded by lush farmland and graceful old plantation mansions and farmhouses. Many of these homes hide original log cabins behind their siding.

The town sits on a little hill and in the distance you can see the tower of the red brick ante-bellum courthouse, the jewel of the old town square. It did not take me long to find Frank Gumm’s birthplace on East Main, only a few blocks from the square. It is a large home and seeing it in person revealed to me that, at least early in his life, Frank Gumm was not poor.

East Main is a lovely street and I enjoyed walking along it, feeling safe and at peace for the first time in nearly a week. One grand home owner had rigged the largest flag I had seen across their lawn.

Later, I sat in my hotel room with a phone book in my lap; making calls to people I hoped might help me in my search for information on the Gumms. Where to begin? A lady with the Historical Society sent me on to others, and they suggested more people to call. One lady I spoke to gave me the names of several people I should call. Another lady once had owned an old country log cabin that was lived in by some ancient Gumms. This was strange news to me.



Behind East Main Street are smaller homes
with brick sidewalks, though the city has
been in the process of removing them.

 In the midst of all this, I was getting the true flavor of Tennessee. Some of these people had very thick accents. That meant that Judy Garland’s father, a native Tennessean must have had an accent too! I wondered why no one had ever mentioned that!

Ralph Puckett, who i descended from the Gumm family on both his mother and his father’s side, had a thick Tennessee accent. He was most generous with information. I didn’t know how connected he was to Judy’s family, but much later he would supply documents which solved some early mysteries. When speaking of Frank Gumm, Ralph made sure to add that his “Daddy didn’t much care for Frank Gumm.” All this was a lot to absorb. Meanwhile, the purpose of my trip was to find out what Frank Gumm’s musical influences were.

I spoke to a music professor at Middle Tennessee State University who told me that unless Frank lived in the country, his musical influences were most likely classical music and church music. He noted that Frank may have had some influence from African-American persons, but more likely those influences would only have occurred if he lived on a farm. Otherwise, his influences would be quite sophisticated.



St. Paul's Chapel



That Sunday, I attended church at St. Paul's Chapel. The church had been moved from around the corner to East Main and the siding had been covered with rock. Still, these were the same walls where young Frank had sung in the choir. I took my tape recorder with me and recorded some of the music. Although the congregation was much smaller then (only about 35), the resonance (and possibly the organ) was the same. It was amazing to be there. Since that time, a large new church has been added on, so church services rarely take place in this chapel. I had come just in time.

Later, I was directed to speak to a man named C.B. Arnette. C.B. was in his eighties and had lived in Murfreesboro nearly all his life. He was very interested in the history of the area and was the author of two books. When we met, he told me about the Chautauqua. Each summer a big tent would be set up just outside the town and for one to two weeks people of all kinds of people would arrive to give presentations. There were preachers and lecturers of all kinds, and there was music. These events were meant to be educational as well as entertaining. The Chautauqua may have been one thing that brought more outside influences to young Frank Gumm. Although Murfreesboro was a small town in the midst of farms, from the very beginning it had been a place of culture and education.



The home where Frank Gumm was
born on March 20th, 1886.



The shady walkways of East
Main Street in Mufreesboro.



After two days in Murfreesboro, I boarded a bus and returned to New Jersey, refreshed and energized by my trip. Murfreesboro felt safe and I thoroughly enjoyed the southern manners and helpfulness of the people. In addition, I had a new picture of Frank Gumm’s beginnings. It would be two years before I returned; two years before my recording project turned into a book.

To learn more about Made in America Vaudeville songs, From Tennessee to Oz or The Judy Garland Museum, please visit the links below: 

 http://www.vaudevillesongs.come

http://www.catsongpublishing.com

http://www.judygarlandmuseum.com

Discovering Judy Garland - How I Began the Journey

Judy Garland was and is, arguably, the greatest entertainer who ever lived. Without a doubt, she was the most loved. Beginning her career at the age of two and a half on the stage of her father’s theater, The New Grand in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, by the age of twelve, she was a veteran performer. She could make an audience laugh and she could bring tears to their eyes. Above anything she might have learned in her young years, she had a voice that was a gift from heaven; it was a voice that touched the heart in a way one never forgot.

Like thousands of others, I was touched by Judy Garland at a young age when I witnessed her on our black and white television, with a basket under one arm and a dog under the other, trying to push her way though the gate to her home in the midst of a tornado. Judy was Dorothy in The Wizerd of Oz. Dorothy was someone I recognized, connected with and loved.

Through the years, I learned to love Judy as Andy Hardy’s best friend, a funny teenager with an infectious giggle, who wrinkled her nose when she laughed. And I was inspired by her beauty as one of MGM studio’s greatest stars, a singer who could belt out a song like nobody’s business. My mother told me Judy had problems with drugs, but that didn’t matter. Judy died when I was fifteen, but she was in my heart forever.

Moving to Hollywood at the age of eighteen, one of my biggest goals was to meet someone who had known Judy. I couldn’t meet her, but I could come close to it. In time, I met many, many people who had known Judy Garland, as well as her children, a former husband and other extended family. I also met people who had known her at three, at six, at ten and at the end of her life. Meeting the people who had known Judy before stardom was especially important to me. Talking to them allowed to me see Judy as a real person, not just a magical movie star.

Eventually, I moved from Hollywood to New York and pursued my own career. Many things happened and, though I always loved Judy’s music and films, I went on with my own life. Then, in 1992 one of my best friends, Robin Weiss, passed away, leaving me a great deal of her Garland collection. One of her dreams had always been to visit Grand Rapids, Minnesota and the house where Judy spent her early years. A few years after Robin’s passing I learned that that home had been moved and there were plans to turn it into a museum.

 

The summer of 1995, I traveled to Grand Rapids for the grand opening of the Judy Garland Birthplace. Late on a June afternoon, a large group of eager fans stood in the heat, with dragon flies flitting around, waiting for the doors to be opened to the public for the first time.  Someone said to me, “There’s someone you should meet over there,” and escorted me to a little lady bent over with osteo-arthritis. This lady met me with a beaming smile. She was my first real connection to Baby Gumm. Wilma Hendriks Casper had lived with the Gumms when Judy was three. While attending high school, she helped Judy's mother, Ethel, with the housework and took care of Mary Jane, Jimmie and Baby Frances while the Gumms were at the theater.



Wilma Hendriks Casper with Michelle Russell in 1995



Over the next three days at the Festival, Wilma and her wonderful husband, Bob, and I became friends. I just loved Wilma. She was sweet, but she was also feisty. She suffered greatly from her illness, but she put her faith in God. She and Bob were still very much in love and could not say enough nice things about each another. They were an inspiration.

On the last day, Wilma and I went into the house by ourselves. The upstairs was as yet not restored, but as we went through the house Wilma shared her memories. Some were dim, but some were quite clear, taking me into the past with Ethel and the girls. Although I didn’t know it, those shared memories were the beginning of my book. For the first time, I saw Ethel as a real person and for the first time, I saw Judy (Frances Ethel Gumm) as a real little girl, running around, giggling, getting into mischief and singing with that incredible voice of hers. “She was the most darling little girl,” said Wilma. “I never forgot her. Later, when she had become famous, and I saw her in the movies, I was so proud of her.”

This began my journey with Judy Garland. In the coming blogs, I will take you on my adventurous journey, writing the book “From Tennessee to Oz” and finding out about Judy Garland and her Gumm family.

The Judy Garland Birthplace, Grand Rapids, MN as it appeared in 1997.
A Museum has since been built. (c) M. Russell