Obit: Pflum, Simon Peter (1886 - 1955)
Contact: Stan

Surnames: Pflum, Deeny, Mellenthin, Summers, Lieberman

----Source: Marshfield News Herald, Marshfield, Wood Co., WI, Feb. 1955

Pflum, Simon Peter (6 Mar. 1886 - 13 Feb. 1955)

Services Wed. for Retired Saddler

Another connection with Marshfield's early years was severed at 2 o'clock Sun.morning when death claimed Simon Peter Pflum, harness maker who spend 55 years in his trade here. He was 68 years old.

Ill health had forced the harness maker to close the community's oldest business, which started in the lumbering days and continued virtually unchanged into the age of the atom, last Oct. 31.

Death came to Simon Pflum at his home at 108 W. Arnold St.

Funeral services will be held at 9am Wed. at St. John's Catholic Church. The Very Rev. Hugh Deeny will officiate and burial will take place in Hillside cemetery. Friends may call at the Hansen Funeral Home beginning this evening. A rosary service will be conducted there at 8:15pm Tues..

Simon Peter Pflum was born in Marshfield March 6, 1886, and was educated in local schools. At the age of 13 he began to learn his trade, joining his three brothers in the business at 144 S. Central Ave. established by his father in 1880.

He married Lena Mellenthin at St. John's parsonage Jan 13, 1909, and took over the proprietorship of the harness shop with the death of his 88-year-old father on Feb. 23, 1918. He was a member of the Catholic Order of Foresters and the St. Joseph's Society.

He is survived by his widow and a daughter Mrs. William (Genevieve) Summers, Hurley; a brother Joseph Pflum, Milwaukee; and a sister, Mrs. Anna Lieberman, Milwaukee.

The business with which Simon Pflum was so long identified goes back to 1879, when his father, a Civil War veteran and saddler by trade, came to this 7-year old community which boasted 600 persons and one carriage horse.

The following year, the Upham Manufacturing Co. engaged in large-scale logging operations, the elder Pflum opened his shop to fill the demand for leather gear and repairs.

The fire of 1887 wiped out the harness shop but was promptly rebuilt on the original site and remained virtually unchanged to the day 3-1/2 months ago when the son closed the doors on Marshfield's oldest business. Some of the advertising posters about the shop had been on display for as long as 30 years.