During his administration, the school board was authorized to levy a tax for the first time. Prior to this time, the public schools had been supported out of the City´s general revenue funds. The first tax collection amounted to $18,000. Mayor Krum is also remembered for making the initial recommendations for the City’s sewer system. It was largely through his efforts that the Missouri General Assembly passed an act on March 12, 1849 providing for a general system of sewerage for St. Louis. The City authorities laid off the districts and worked out the details of this general plan.

Mayor Krum was born on March 10, 1810 at Hillsdale, NY. In 1833 he came to the St. Louis area as a practicing lawyer. He settled at Alton, IL in 1835, where he was elected as the first Mayor of Alton in 1837. During that administration, the "Alton riot” occurred, in which anti-slavery publisher Elizah P. Lovejoy was killed. In 1839 he married Miss Ophelia Harding and they raised a family of five children. In 1840 he moved to St. Louis and was made judge of the Circuit Court in 1843, a position he held until he ran for mayor in 1848.

Mr. Krum was also a director of Washington University and a professor at the St. Louis University Law School. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he withdrew from the Democratic Party and supported the Republicans thereafter. He was a colonel of the ninth regiment during the Civil War.

He continued to practice law here for many years before he died on September 13, 1883. Burial was in Bellefontaine Cemetery.