As her husband was involved in missionary service, the couple moved often, but Stumm was able to work as a writer and teacher.

She wrote for many newspapers and journals in the black press and was noted by numerous compilers of her day as an influential and effective journalist.

Stumm was called to missionary work and spent two years at his first station before being transferred to Elizabethtown in Hardin County, Kentucky.

[7] Shortly before the couple moved in 1879 to Frankfort, Stumm published her first journalistic effort, a discussion over a religious topic printed in the local paper.

[8] Stumm began working for the Brooklyn-based National Monitor, as their Philadelphia business manager and correspondent, and with a similar arrangement for Our Women and Children, a magazine published in Louisville, Kentucky.

[17][18] Stumm continued her writing and was publishing a syndicated column, "Women's Influence", which was featured in The Future State, a magazine from Kansas.