When Edward Clyde Rummel was born in May 1883, in Ohio, United States, his father, John Craig Rummel, was 40 and his mother, Martha Hickenlooper, was 27. He married Sadie Henderson on 15 May 1905, in Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah, United States. He died in 1978, at the age of 95, and was buried in Boise, Ada, Idaho, United States.