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| Source, Coty Herring. |
DISCOVERS [GRAVE]
OF COLONEL
WHO SERVED IN 1812
The way of the research worker is over rough and
rugged paths, past logs, over barbed wire fences, through swarms of
grasshoppers, hornets, and bumblebees’ nests, and cockle-burr patches, and down
into the holes of foxes, waist deep. But oh! the joy of finding the grave of a
long lost patriot or pioneer erases all the memories.
In the most out of the way spots we find, “beneath the
roots of tangled weeds, afar in country graveyards, lie the ones whose
uncrowned deeds have stamped the nation's destiny, beneath the tottering slabs
of stone whose tribute moss and mould efface, sleep the calm dust that made us
great, the true substratum of our race.
Only recently in a weed patch in Philadelphia was
found a stone bearing this inscription, “In memory of Capt. John Gwinn, U. S.
Navy. Died in Palermo, Sicily, Sept. 4, 1849, while in command of the U.S.
frigate Constitution. He served his country faithfully for forty years.” Near him,
covered with weeds, was his wife who had died 35 years after her gallant
husband. His body was recently buried in Arlington National cemetery with great
honors; his wife will rest at his side.
This find seems to spur one on, wondering what brave
and sturdy patriots rest in our weed covered graveyards. John W. Lazenby called
me Saturday to tell me that a “colonel” was buried in a graveyard on the farm
of Jeff Wilson about three miles south of Winchester, on the Glasgow Road.
Claude Workman had recently lived on the farm, and had turned over the fallen
grave stone and noticed that it was to a “colonel.”
We visited farms, hailed men on the road but no one
could solve the mystery. After we found the spot, the inscription read..
"Col. John Summers, born June 5, 1794—died Nov. 6, 1869," but no one
seemed to know the colonel. We visited Scott county’s tablet to all the war
dead and found his name was missing.
Curiosity spurred us on, until we found Homer B.
Summers, who sent us into Winchester where we found a real son of 1812, Thomas
Jefferson Summers, a son of the Colonel. He and his charming wife gave us the
following authentic record of the colonel:
“Col John Summers was born in Tennessee, fought in the
war of 1812 from LaGrange County, Tenn. For his gallantry in resisting British
and Indian attacks, he was made colonel of a regiment when almost a youth. For
his service in the war he was given 160 acres in Illinois and came to this
state and settled, He reserved one acre of land for burial purposes, but now
the gravestones are broken by cattle, for the plot is a pasture. Summers’s
grave stone is broken in three pieces but retains the crossed staves of Britain
and the U. S. to indicate the war of 1812.
“Col Summers was married three times, first to Sarah
Jackson of Tennessee, second to Miss Todd, third to Louisa Lankford. By his
last wife he had six daughters and four sons. He married his last wife in Scott
County in 1843. He also served as a private in the Black Hawk War.”
Thomas Jefferson Summers married Miss Artilisa Dyer, a
daughter of the pioneer, Dennis Gibson. They will have been married 69 years in
December of this year. In their home old Col. Summers died of a fever in 1869
after a few days’ illness.
Real sons of 1812 are rare and we hold their links
with the past as precious.
