Notes:
never married
10 Oct 1956: Harrisburg: A nearby Hummelstown lady farmer prepared to carry to the US Supreme Court her appeal for a US District Court judgement fining her $403 on charges of over-planting her wheat acreage allotment. "Congress has no legal right to pass any law which forbids a farmer to eat the food he has grown on his own land and further directs him what to plant and what to reap", Miss Elsie Mumma said last night.
Act On Ammendment
The US Court of Appeals in Philadelphia upheld the $403 judgement last Monday and contended that the agricultural act of 1936 was constitutional. The US Agricultural Department charges Miss Mumma with overplanting by 18 acres her six acre wheat quota for 1954. The US Supreme Court previously upheld the Agricultural Act by Miss Mumma said "the act has been upheld on certain sections, never as a whole." [Gettysburg Gazette]
[Baton Rouge LA Advocate, Thursday, January 18, 1968}
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Death Claims Farm Lady Who Made History
HUMMELSTOWN, Pa. (AP) - Like other farm owners during World War II, Miss Elsie Mumma was told by the federal government how much she could plant.
She didn't complain.
But when the war ended, so did her wholehearted compliance with government controls.
In 1955 she refused to pay a $403 government fine for overplanting. She took her case to court and the result was a new law liberalising federal crop regulations.
Miss Mumma then returned to her farm near Harrisburg and continued running It until shed became ill. She died Monday at Harrisburg at the age of 67.
Her battle with Uncle Sam attracted national attention and would have been enough to ensure her a certain measure of fame. But Miss Mumma also succeeded in several other things.
She was born on the family's 70-acre farm in South central Pennsylvania and later studied pre-law at Gettysburg College as a member of its first coeducational class. She then became a New York stage and nightclub dancer and a model who moved In society circles.
After insurance studies at New York and Columbia Universities, she became the first woman to join the National Association of Life Underwrlters "Million Dollar Roundtable - an honor earned by selling that much insurance in a year. In 1934 she traveled around the world for five years and sold 3.5 million worth of insurance.
Her father became ill in 1941, an Miss Mumma returned to the farm. When he died, she took over its operation.
After World War II, she decided to plant her farm "the way God and good sense dictates without government Interference." In 1955 she was charged with overplanting her wheat acreage quota by 18 acres. Instead of paying, she waged a long court battle which ended in a new law allowing farmers to plant 30 acres of wheat for their own consumption without coming under allotment controls.
Funeral services will be held Thursday In Middletown with burial in Hummelstown Cemetery.