Individual Details

Robert Ernest Hume was born on March 20, 1877 in Ahmednagar, India, to missionary parents Robert Allen Hume and Abbie Burgess. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University, and received his B.D. from Union Theological Seminary in 1904. A year later he was ordained a Congregationalist minister. In 1907, he married Laura Caswell and traveled to India to serve as a missionary under the American Board of Congregational Foreign Missions.

Hume served on the faculty of Ahmednagar Theological Seminary in India for two years before becoming the editor of Bombay’s bilingual weekly, Dhyanodaya, in 1909. During his seven years as editor he also taught at Williams College, helped to organize the Social Service League in Bombay, and lectured at universities across India.

Hume returned to the United States in 1914 and was inaugurated that same year as the Marcellus Hartley Professor of the Philosophy and History of Religion and Missions at Union Theological Seminary. After four years he was transferred to the Charles Butler Chair of History of Religions, a position which he held until his retirement in 1944. His book entitled The World’s Living Religions was widely circulated; it was the only religious book other than the Bible to be included in the time capsule at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Hume also served as president of the American Theological Society

in 1939, and was a member of the American Association of the Advancement of Science. Hume passed away on June 14, 1948 in New York
City.

http://library.columbia.edu/content/dam/libraryweb/locations/burke/fa/mrl/ldpd_10209015.pdf

These paragraphs are taken from a book on the Internet called Benjamin Van Buren's Bay, by Charles Gosselink. The URL is

http://www.penfield.fm/vanburenbay/chapter8.html

"In 1915 Dr. Robert E. and Laura Hume acquired the lakefront property just north of Penfield Cottage, which had belonged to Judge Wilson. The Humes had solid Silver Bay credentials. Robert was a graduate student at Yale and Laura a nurse at Massachusetts General when they met at a college conference at Silver Bay in 1904. They were engaged on Sunrise Mountain and married in 1905. The couple went as missionaries to India, where Robert had been born of missionary parents, and stayed seven years, serving in various capacities in the Bombay area. Their sons Robert and Edward were born there. They returned in 1913 when Dr. Hume was offered a professorship in the History of Religion at Union Seminary. They came to Silver Bay in 1914 and 1915, renting cottages on Van Buren Bay. As noted earlier, their daughter Jane McCormick Mitchell was born in the Paine farm house in 1915.[92]

In the winter of 1916, the Humes began construction of their own cottage. Louis Spelman supervised the work, and it is said that some of the materials used were leftover from the construction of Fisher Gymnasium. It is a house of many rooms and its wide porches take full advantage of the view of the lake. Dr. Hume wrote several of his books on the history of religion in his second floor study, and the cottage still contains brass lamps and other artifacts dating back to the family's time in India. Jane and Jim McCormick inherited the property, and Jane is now passing it on to her children, Robert, James, and Sally Pickert and their families. In 1950, Robert C. and Elizabeth Hume bought a plot of land just above the original house and built a small cottage there overlooking Shawanapek Beach. They spent summers there for years before health problems kept them away. Elizabeth has recently given that property to her grandchildren, Cheryl Corsi and Lisa Foy."

Birth	20 Mar 1877	Ahmednagar, Bombay Presidency, India
Marriage	15 Mar 1907	Charlotte, New Brunswick, CAN - Laura Caswell
Immigration	2 Apr 1914	From India to US
Census	27 Jan 1920	New York, New York, USA
Residence	23 Jan 1924	606 West 122nd St., New York, New York, USA
Census	1930	New York, New York, USA
Census	1940	606 West 122nd St., New York, New York, USA
Death	14 Jun 1948	405 West 118th St, New York, New York, USA

Spouse	Laura Caswell (1878 - )
Child	Robert Caswell Hume (1908 - 1997)
Child	Edward Putnam Hume (1911 - 1989)
Child	Jane Williams Hume (1915 - 2005)

Father	Robert Allen Hume (1847 - )
Mother	Living

Notes