page_title: Jethro Sumner
section_title: Post-war activities, death, and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Jethro Sumner / Post-war activities, death, and legacy
caption_attribution_description: English: The Jethro Sumner Monument at Guilford Courthouse National Military Park
context_page_description: Jethro Exum Sumner was a North Carolina landowner and businessman, and an officer in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Born in Virginia Colony, Sumner's military service began in the French and Indian War as a member of the state's Provincial forces. After the conclusion of that conflict, he moved to Bute County, Province of North Carolina where he acquired a substantial area of land and operated a tavern. He served as Sheriff of Bute County, but with the coming of the American Revolution, he became a strident Patriot, and was elected to North Carolina's Provincial Congress.
  Sumner was named the commanding officer of the 3rd North Carolina Regiment of the North Carolina Line, a formation of the Continental Army, in 1776, and served in both the Southern theater and Philadelphia campaign. He was one of five brigadier generals from North Carolina in the Continental Army, in which capacity he served between 1779 and 1783. He served with distinction in the battles of Stono Ferry and Eutaw Springs, but recurring bouts of poor health often forced him to play an administrative role, or to convalesce in North Carolina.
context_section_description: Following the war's end in 1783, Sumner returned to Bute County, which had been renamed Warren County after Joseph Warren, the hero of the Battle of Bunker Hill.  It appears that Sumner's wife died at some point between 1781 and 1785.  For his service in the Continental Army, he received a land warrant on October 23, 1783, which represented compensation for 84 months of service.  Sumner helped create North Carolina's chapter of the Society of the Cincinnati in October 1783, and served as its first president.
  Sumner died in Warren County between March 15 and March 19, 1785, at the age of 52.  At his death, he owned 20,000 acres (8,000 ha) of land in North Carolina and Tennessee (much of which in the latter was part of the Continental Army land warrant he received), as well as 35 slaves.  He was originally buried eight miles (13 km) outside of Warrenton, but in 1891 his remains were moved to the Guilford Courthouse Battlefield, where they were interred under a monument intended as part of a "shrine to patriots".  In March 2012, a driver struck Sumner's monument after going off-road to avoid hitting a deer, nearly destroying the stone structure.  The monument was restored by May 2012, and Sumner was reburied in a public ceremony. Sumner County, Tennessee, originally in the western portion of North Carolina, was named for him, although Sumner never visited the county.
caption: The Jethro Sumner Monument at Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, where Sumner was re-interred in 1891
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