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Horace Delbert Hume was born on his
parents' farm in Moundville Township near Endeavor, Wisconsin, on
August 15, 1898 the first of four children. He lived 103 years and was
well known and highly respected in Mendota. During his lifetime, he patented
over 100 inventions. His company began on January 1, 1941 with a crew of
three recruits. It patented over 200 inventions. It was first known as the
Hume-Love Company. When the Hume-Love partnership ended in 1944, Horace
became the owner of the H. D. Hume Company in Mendota, Illinois.
Realizing that 50 percent of the pea crop and as high as 90 percent of the
seed peas were lost during harvest, Mr. Hume and his friend Ed. Love, a
farmer with a college degree in mechanical engineering, adapted Ed's own
cutterbar to enable it to fit his Rumley combine. By the time that they
received their first patent on the cutterbar in 1932, Mr. Hume was already
nearing completion of his second invention, the Hume Reel. A book
entitled Cowboy to Industrialist describes many of his
accomplishments. This book is for sale at the Hume-Carnegie Museum gift shop.
The Carnegie building, which housed the town's library from 1904 to 1994 was given to the Mendota Museum & Historical Society which was organized by Mr. Hume. |