"Titus Brum (1800-1881) and Eunice Brum (1803-1895) were early residents of Ithaca. Born in Genoa in 1803, Eunice moved to Ithaca in the 1810s, when she was 10 or twelve years old. Titus Brum, who was born in Greene County in about 1800, purchased a lot on South Cayuga Street in 1824. Titus and Eunice raised a large family in the house. Titus was a charter member of the First Baptist Church founded in 1826-1827, and for several decades Eunice was known as the preeminent caterer in the village. For more than three decades “no fashionable wedding in Ithaca and vicinity has been regarded strictly
en regle unless Mrs. Brum was the presiding genius over the accompanying feast,” noted the
Ithaca Daily Journal in 1885. The Brums actively supported abolition of slavery. The attic of the Brum home was reportedly a haven for freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad before the Civil War. Eunice and Titus’s oldest child, Ira Brum (1836-1865), served in Company F of the 185th New York Volunteers, reportedly as its only black soldier. He died of typhoid fever shortly after his company was mustered out of service in 1865. In 1951, the Brum’s granddaughter, Jessie Johnson (1860-1951), died and left her home to the
Southside Community Center and to the First Baptist Church. A later generation recognized the Brum family’s vital contributions to Ithaca history in July 2012, when the Tompkins County Civil War 150th Commemoration Commission unveiled the restoration of the Brum family gravestone at the Ithaca City Cemetery.”