The following information was assembled from numerous sources and cannot be used directly as proof of Qualifying Service or Lineage.
It is considered a research aid and is intended to assist in locating sources that can be used as proof.
State of Service: NC
Qualifying Service: Brigadier General
Birth: 1733 / / VA Death: 18 Mar 1785 / Warren / NC
Qualifying Service Description:
Colonel of the Third North Carolina, Continental Troops - April 15, 1776
Charleston, June 28, 1776
Brandywine, Sept. 11, 1777
Germantown, Oct. 4, 1777
Monmouth, June 20, 1778
Stono Ferry, June 20, 1779
Eutaw Springs, Sept. 8, 1781
Additional References:
Heitman, Francis B, Historical Register of Officers of the Continental Army During the War of the Revolution, 1775-1873, Washington DC: Rare Book Shop Publishing Company, 1914, pg 10, 12, 45, 527, 640
Grave Registry form. National Society Sons of the American Revolution (SAR)
Records of the Rev War, Section: Part II - Promises and Contracts, pg 434
Spouse: Mary Hurst Children: Thomas; McKinnie; Jacky
Members Who Share This Ancestor
None*
*This means that the NSSAR has no applications for this Patriot on file.
Instead the information provided is best effort, and from volunteers who have either researched grave sites, service records, or something similar. There is no documentation available at NSSAR HQ to order.
Jethro Exum Sumner was born in 1733 in Nansemond County, Virginia, the son of Jethro and Margaret (Sullivan) Sumner.
With war on the horizon, Jethro served in the Virginia militia from 1755 to 1761. Jethro was commissioned as a Lieutenant on 9 September 1775 under Colonel Nicholas Long in the Halifax, Virginia District Minutemen. He participated in the capture of Fort Duquesne on 25 November 1758 and served as commander of Fort Bedford, Pennsylvania, in 1760. His Regiment was disbanded in 1761. All Minutemen regiments in Virginia were disbanded on 10 April 1776.
Jethro moved to Bute County, North Carolina, sometime before 1764, where he met and married Mary Hurst. They had three known children:
Thomas
McKinnie
Jacky
His wife's sizable inheritance allowed Jethro to become a tavern keeper and planter at the county seat of Bute (later Warren) County, North Carolina. Jethro became Justice of the Peace in 1768 and Sherriff in 1772. He resigned from his office as sheriff in 1776 and was commissioned as Colonel in the North Carolina Continental forces.
Jethro was commissioned Colonel and Commandant of the 3rd North Carolina Regiment of the Continental Line on 15 April 1776. Colonel Sumner was ordered to aid in the defense of Charleston, South Carolina, under the overall Command of Major General Charles Lee in June of 1776, where he led his Regiment at the battle of Fort Moultrie, South Carolina, on 28 June 1776. This action helped keep the British from taking Charleston until three years later, in 1780. Colonel Sumner took a leave of absence for health reasons from September 1776 until early 1777 and went home to North Carolina.
After Jethro returned to command the 3rd North Carolina regiment, he was ordered to march his troops north to serve under George Washington in the Philadelphia Campaign. In this engagement, Sumner fought at Brandywine Creek, Pennsylvania, on 11 September 1777, Germantown, Pennsylvania, on 4 October 1777, and at Monmouth, New Jersey on 28 June 1778.
Jethro Sumner was commissioned as a Brigadier General on 9 January 1779. He was given command of the 2nd North Carolina Brigade, which contained the 4th, 5th, and 6th North Carolina Regiments. This Brigade was ordered south to join Major General Benjamin Lincoln in South Carolina. He led his brigade in the Battle of Stono Ferry on 20 June 1779.
After the Battle of Stono Ferry, Sumner, then battling health problems again, was sent home to assist in recruiting for the North Carolina Continental Line. Jethro recuperated at home during the second British Siege of Charleston in April 1780. As such, General Jethro Sumner was not present at the surrender of Charleston on 12 May 1780 after a six-week siege and was not taken prisoner as 5,00 Patriots from this engagement, including Major General Benjamin Lincoln, were.
Angry that the North Carolina State Legislature appointed Brigadier General William Smallwood of Maryland to command the North Carolina Troops in October of 1780, Sumner refused further militia duty. In October 1780, General Washington appointed Major General Nathaneal Greene as the commander of the Continental Army in the southern theater. General Greene came south in December of 1780 and sought Sumner's help to rehabilitate the North Carolina Continental Line. Sumner continued to recruit in North Carolina until he was ordered to join Greene in South Carolina on 2 June 1781. By August of 1781, he had joined the Southern army with three small regiments of 350 raw Continentals. On 8 September 1781, his brigades were stationed on the right of the second line at the Battle of Eutaw Springs, where they fought well.
In 1783, General Sumner returned to his wife and children in Blunt County, North Carolina, which had been renamed Warren County by then, and there he resumed his life as a tavern keeper and planter.
The Patriot passed away at his home on 18 March 1785 at 52 and was interred in Warrenton, North Carolina. In 1891, his remains were exhumed and moved to the Guilford Courthouse National Battlefield in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Send a biographical sketch of your patriot!
Patriot biographies must be the original work of the author, and work submitted must not belong to another person or group, in observance with copyright law. Patriot biographies are to be written in complete sentences, follow the established rules of grammar, syntax and punctuation, be free of typographical errors, and follow a narrative format. The narrative should unfold in a logical manner (e.g. the narrative does not jump from time period to time period) or have repeated digressions, or tell the history of the patriot's line from the patriot ancestor to the author. The thinking here is that this is a patriot biography, not a lineage report or a kinship determination project or other report published in a genealogy journal. The biography should discuss the qualifying service (military, patriotic, civil) of the patriot ancestor, where the service was rendered, whether this was a specific state or Continental service, as well as significant events (as determined by the author) of the patriot's life. This is the entire purpose of a patriot's biography.
Additional guidelines around the Biography writeup can be found here:
Send your submission1, in a Microsoft Word compatible format, to patriotbios@sar.org for inclusion in this space 1Upon submission of a patriot biography, the patriot biography becomes the property of the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, and may be edited to conform to the patriot biography submission standards.
Additional Information:
No entry was found in DAR Ancestor Search in Oct 2021