In a Nutshell

As some of you know, the Summers Saga being written is intended to go from the first U.S. Summers in my wife's line, Thomas Summers of Delaware, down to John William Summers and Verne Crabtree of Southeast Missouri, her grandparents, and their descendants. But sometimes diagrams are a little more explanatory than is prose. So here is the familial line that comprises the book's skeleton:

The Wittenberg Summers Line

Omitted from the chart are grandkids and great grandkids of John and Verne, many of whom will appear in the book. Also appearing will be the siblings, spouses, etc of all these people as well as some Duckworths, Dillards, Lambs, Crabtrees, Funkhausers, and other strays. You'll have to read the book to see how all these fit in.

Since the book ends with the descendants of John and Verne Crabtree Summers and because the last place John, Verne, and their five children lived as a unit for any significant time was Wittenberg, Missouri, I am going to call this the "Wittenberg Summers Line."

The chart above shows the book's familial journey. Here is the geographic journey:

A Summers Saga

Well, I’m finally actually writing the Summers book, working title: A Summers Saga, The Wittenberg Summers. I must admit, however, that the subtitle might be misleading. Wittenberg is Wittenberg, Missouri, not Wittenberg, Germany. The former is where John William Summers, telegrapher and station master for the Frisco Railroad, and his family lived before the family relocated following John's early death.

This book arises from a rash promise I made to my life’s companion and BFF, Mary Frances—a  promise that I would document the origins of her parents, Dale and Eloise (Wehner) Summers. With the completion of a volume (tome?) about Eloise’s origins (Bier und Brot), it’s Dale’s turn, starting with his 4^th great grandfather, Thomas Summers of Delaware.

The present book follows a single line (more or less) descending from Thomas. Were all Thomas's lines covered, the book would require decades to complete and a warehouse to shelve. I have available neither the decades nor a warehouse.

The book’s line starts with Thomas and ends with the family and descendants of John William and Verne Cumi (Crabtree) Summers (Dale’s parents). Covered is the journey of John’s antecedents from Delaware to North Carolina to Tennessee to Southern Illinois and, finally to Southeast Missouri. The proposed cover shows Tower Rock, emerging from the Mississippi near the town of Wittenberg, Missouri, the last place John, Verne, and their five children lived as a unit for any significant time. For convenience I call this family line, the "Wittenberg Summers Line." To avoid a bulky name, I am leaving out "Missouri," even though there is a danger of confusion with Wittenberg, Germany.

In the Beginning

Mary Frances and I recently returned from a 4000-mile (or so) trip to investigate Summers and Tapscotts. The excuse was to attend the Tapscott Family Reunion in Fauquier County, Virginia, but family research was also a motive. We spent loads of time in/at museums, historical societies, archives, and cemeteries researching Tapscotts (my family) and Summers (Mary Frances's family). And for the Summers, we started where our knowledge of the line (which I term the “Wittenberg Missouri Summers” line) begins, in Delaware, a state new to both Mary Frances and myself.

It all started with Thomas Summers, a well-to-do early 18th-century planter, who owned several hundred acres of land in the Mispillion Hundreds area of Kent County, Delaware. Oh, there are countless published trees out there (well over three thousand on the internet at Ancestry.com alone) that carry the line beyond Delaware, back to England, claiming that Thomas was born at various dates in Newcastle on Tyne. But nearly all of those three thousand plus trees give other trees as sources. A case of trees referencing trees. And those very, very few that cite baptismal and/or birth records for a Thomas Summers fail to prove that the Thomas Summers in the record is the same as the Delaware Thomas Summers. There are, unfortunately, a huge number of Thomas Summers in the world. Perhaps someday we will find some documents here in the U.S. that will allow us to reliably trace Thomas’s ancestry back to the old world, but that someday has yet to arrive.

Mispillion Hundred in Kent,
one of Delaware’s three counties.

Thomas likely did have his roots in England, the home of many Summers. He may have arrived in New York in 1720, since this is the only known arrival of a Thomas Summers near the time our Thomas first appears in this country. Note, however, that another Thomas Summers arrived in Maryland in 1678, and Maryland is quite close to Delaware. Nevertheless, the earliest concrete thing that we know of our Thomas Summers is that on 12 May 1741 he obtained a warrant for 200 acres of land in Mispillion Hundred in Kent County, Delaware.

Mispillion Hundred area of Colonial Delaware.

And what is Mispillion Hundred? A “hundred” was a term used in Old England for a piece of land that could supply one hundred men at arms or that could support one hundred families, take your choice, for the origin of the term is obscure. In the new world hundreds were simply portions of land, with varying areas, within a county, essentially townships. Delaware still uses the term “hundred” as a land unit.

A few woods remain, but most Mispillion forest

has been replaced with farmland (2019).

The designation  “Mispillion” came from the name of the creek flowing through this hundred, but the origin of the name of the creek is uncertain. A 1664 map shows the name Mispening Creek. Mispillion is the largest Hundred in Kent County though it is smaller than it was in colonial times, when it occupied all the land south of Murderkill Creek and north of Mispillion Creek from the Delaware Bay to the Maryland line. In early times, the area was covered with forest (largely cleared today) and in deeds the term “forest of Mispillion Hundred” was often used.