An Immigrant Story - Ransom E. Cundy

St. Cecilia Catholic School in Hubbell, MI

The Slocketts arrived from Cornwall in 1854. The Cundys came from Cornwall via New York in the 1860s. The DuLongs came from Quebec a few years later. The Dyson and Croft families left England for Ontario, arriving in the Copper Country in the 1870s. These families came to work the area’s copper mines, mills, and smelters, and stayed to become established and respected community members. From these Copper Country founding families were born many descendants. One of them was Ransom E. Cundy.

Corporal Ransom Edward Cundy was born in Houghton on April 16, 1922, to Ransom Slockett Cundy and Lucille (DuLong) Cundy. Ransom Sr., a veteran of World War I, had served as a Private in the 279^th Aero Squadron Air Service. The Cundy family moved to Hubbell soon after Ransom’s birth. There, Cundy Sr. worked for the Calumet & Hecla (C&H) Mining Company smelter. Cundy Jr. attended St. Cecilia Catholic School for elementary school.[1]

After graduating from Lake Linden High School, Ransom Cundy served with the 1^st Battalion 23^rd Marines in the United States Marine Corps, seeing action at the battle of Iwo Jima. January 1946 muster rolls place Cundy in San Francisco, a member of the 7^th Provisional Military Police Battalion. He was honorably discharged May 3, 1946.

After his discharge, Cundy married in June of 1946. Their first child was born in November of that year. A month later, he found work at the Great Lakes Shipping Company as a Wheelsman. He worked there for four months before taking up a job as a machinist at the Burroughs Adding Machine Company in Detroit. In May 1948, the young family moved back up to the Copper Country and Cundy found work like his father’s with the Calumet and Hecla Mining Company.[2]

On Cundy’s C&H employee information card, his occupation is listed as laborer, his work division labeled as “sm” for smelter. He did not stay with C&H long; after three months he clocked out, never to return. According to an interview with his daughter Cheryl in 2005, it was his father who introduced his son to the captain of a coal ore freighter, where he found a job on one of the boats. Ransom Cundy Sr. likely met the freighter captain at the C&H smelter where the Cundys were employed. This kicked off Ransom Jr.’s career as a sailor. Cundy sailed for multiple other companies and many different ships before joining the crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1967. Despite spending his life on the seas, he joked with his daughter, “Cotton, I’d go down with the boat, because I can’t even dog paddle.”[3]

The Edmund Fitzgerald was one of the biggest freighters on the biggest lake in the Americas. She measured 729 feet and weighed over 13,600 tons unladen. After her maiden voyage in 1958, she primarily carried iron ore in the form of taconite pellets. From his first step onboard until the final voyage on of the Edmund Fitzgerald on November 10, 1975 Ransom Cundy worked as a watchman. He went down with the ship and 28 other members of the crew in one of the best-known Great Lakes maritime losses of the last half century.

 

1950 census records lists Cundy’s residence as Block 11 along the west side of Duncan Avenue (today US-26).

 

[1] SS Edmund Fitgerald Online, “Ransom E. Cundy” https://ssedmundfitzgerald.org/ransom-e-cundy

[2] CMEC Database, https://miners.mtu.edu/ecm/record/106849

[3] SS Edmund Fitzgerald Online, “Cheryl Rozman Interview” https://ssedmundfitzgerald.org/cheryl-rozman-interview