Casper John (C J) Hummel was born in Germany in 1849 and came with his parents (John Hummel and Regina Hipp) at the age of two to America where they eventually settled in western Pennsylvania. C J Hummel attended school till age 8 when he started work; selling and buying slab wood. At age ten he joined a threshing outfit and worked with it for the next five years. At 15 years and three months he joined the Union Army; Company F, One Hundred and eighty eight Ohio volunteer infantry. For the next eight months of his service he was engaged in a number of skirmishes in the Middle West and in the South.
After he was discharged he worked as a blacksmith, later was a sailor and pilot on the Great lakes eventually returning to his parents home to help them. In 1868 he was teamster hauling oil out of Titusville, Pennsylvania. In 1870 he married Anna Rickert.
Working in Titusville he became a tool dresser and later an oil pumper. In 1873 he lost everything in the Panic of 1873. Eventually he became a Wild Cat Oil Driller and he had nine wells in operation all pumping oil at one time. He was one of the pioneers of Pennsylvania Oil. In 1889 he purchased a 172 acre farm near Smith Ferry, Ohio township, Beaver County, Pennsylvania.
About 1917 he sold everything and moved to the Delmar/Salisbury Maryland area at Leonard Mill pond. When CJ Hummel moved to the Leonard Mill Pond area he was already in his 60’s. It was his wife, his youngest daughter; Eleanor and him. The other family members were adults and on their own.
Casper John Hummel served in the Union forces during the Civil War. He was a member of G. A. R. (Grand Army of the Republic) at Salisbury. He applied for a pension based on that service in 1907. After his death his wife would apply in 1930 for a widow’s pension based on his service. He was well known in the area and attended all the G. A. R. parades and functions.
CJ Hummel would die in 1930 at the age of 82. His wife, Anna, would die in 1936. Both are buried in Parson cemetery Salisbury, Maryland.
