Bavarian immigrant brother and sister Ezekiel Stump (born 1842, died 1904) and Hortense Stump Weissbrot (born 1839, died 1910) purchased a struggling mirror and frame business from a neighbor in 1861 and founded the Stump Family Company, shortly after their arrival in San Francisco, via Boston. They remained owners of the shop until 1900, when Ezekiel's son Hiram (born 1868), more commonly known as Mort, took over the business. When the 1906 earthquake demolished the store, Mort Stump was forced to start the business anew. Strong family connections in the area drove his decision to relocate the business to Springfield, Massachusetts, where it reopened in 1907. Mort Stump's love of Asian design, and family business connections made during four decades operating in San Francisco, led to a focus of the new Stump's Dry Goods store on imported Asian merchandise, making it a high-end destination for shoppers from throughout New England. At the instigation of Hiram's son Montgomery (born 1910, died 1992), who inherited the business, by the 1930s known simply as Stumps, upon his father's death in 1943, the store initiated a highly successful catalog and mail order business in 1950. The catalog business expanded beyond New England the reputation of Stumps as a purveyor of quality Asian goods, especially clothing and household and decorative items. Montgomery Stump was president of the company and ran the store until 1975, when he sold the business to a Boston-area department store conglomerate and retired to an island estate in the South Pacific. Montgomery Stump graduated from Carpe Diem University in 1931, majoring in Asian history and cultures, and it was there that he met his wife, Uyemaruko Shokushi (1912-1998), who studied at Carpe Diem as an exchange student and had a significant career as a poet. Several of their children and grandchildren are also alumni of Carpe Diem University. In 1988 the Stumps underwrote the construction of Shokushi Hall at the university, which houses several programs in Asian history, literatures, and cultures, as well as a museum of Asian art and artifacts to which several generations of Stump family members have contributed.