Sumner County Genealogy
- Formed 1786
- Parent county / earlier Davidson / early Cumberland
- County seat Gallatin
Sumner County, Tennessee — formed 1786. Research hub notes below; verify at Tennessee State Library and Archives (TSLA).
In-depth topics
- Getting started in Sumner
- Land & deeds research notes
- Probate & estates research notes
- Newspapers & obituaries
- Churches & cemeteries
- Tax lists & local assessments — Sumner
- Military service & pensions — Sumner
- Migration & neighbor counties — Sumner
- African American research notes — Sumner
- Repositories & film strategy — Sumner
- Quick research checklist — Sumner
- Churches & registers — Sumner
- Newspapers & legal notices — Sumner
- Cemeteries & burial evidence — Sumner
- City & business directories — Sumner
- Maps, plats & boundaries — Sumner
Towns & communities
History notes
Sumner County, Tennessee. Sumner County (seat Gallatin) early Middle TN. Strong migration from VA/NC families; neighbor Davidson, Wilson, Robertson.
Verify series at Tennessee State Library and Archives (TSLA). Neighbor FAN work: abstract witnesses and adjoining owners.
Historical markers in Sumner County
- 3A 18 Rock Castle
Rock Castle, a mile south, was begun in 1784 and finished in 1791 after delays from Indian attacks. It was the home of Daniel Smith: Revolutionary colonel, Mero District militia general, territorial secretary and U.S. senator. A landmark for Smith family research and early Hendersonville settlement.
- 3A 171 Fountain Head
James Gwin and family, who arrived in 1792, were among Fountain Head's first permanent settlers; his son Samuel became the first postmaster in 1828 and son William M. Gwin a U.S. senator from California. Bishop William McKendree also lived here, and the Tennessee Methodist Conference was organized at Micajah House's home in November 1812.
- 3A 172 Richland
Thomas Buntin opened Richland Station on October 31, 1859, and became its first postmaster; the town was renamed Portland on April 10, 1888, to avoid confusion with Richland in Grainger County. Search under Richland for Portland families before 1888. Camp Trousdale, a Confederate camp, was nearby from 1861 to 1862.
- 3A 220 William Owen Bradley 1915-1998
Owen Bradley (1915 to 1998) was born in Westmoreland to Vernon and Letha Male Owen Bradley and moved to Nashville at seven. He and his brother Harold opened the first studio on what became Music Row, and he produced records for Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Brenda Lee and many others.
- 3A 227 Saundersville United Methodist Church
Rev. Hubbard Saunders founded Saundersville Methodist Church in 1798, and the present building dates from 1867. The marker notes Saundersville had 1,573 people in the 1870 census while Hendersonville had about 30, so many families now thought of as Hendersonville appear under Saundersville in older records.
- 3A 231 Durham's Chapel Rosenwald School 1923-1962
This two-room Rosenwald school, built in 1923 for Black children near Bethpage with community, county and Rosenwald money, was used until 1962 and was a gathering place for the area's African American families. It passed to the Durham's Chapel Community Club in November 1962.
- 3A 242 The Cash Home
Johnny and June Carter Cash lived in this Braxton Dixon designed house above Old Hickory Lake for 35 years, until their deaths in 2003, entertaining family and fellow musicians.
- 3A 243 The Orchard
In 1968 Roy Orbison sold Johnny Cash this lakeside lot after a fire destroyed Orbison's house and killed two of his sons; Cash promised never to build on it and the family kept an orchard here.
- 3A 261 King Solomon Masonic Lodge # 6
King Solomon Lodge in Gallatin, first chartered in North Carolina as No. 52, was chartered in Tennessee as No. 6 in 1808, and its members helped form the Grand Lodge of Tennessee on December 27, 1813. Masonic lodge records can document early Gallatin men.
- 3A 265 Original Church of God / L.M Swanson’s Nursing Home
Bishop Lula Mae Swanson founded and pastored the Original Church of God in Gallatin, Belvidere and Hartsville for fifty-five years and preached on WHIN radio. In 1954 she used her own funds to open L. M. Swanson's Nursing Home, the first convalescent home for African Americans in Gallatin, caring for twenty-three patients.
- 3A 266 Camp Bell
William Bowen Campbell served in the Seminole, Mexican and Civil wars, in Congress (1837 to 1843 and 1866 to 1867) and as governor (1851 to 1853); Lincoln made him a brigadier general in 1862. His home, Camp Bell, is on Coles Ferry Pike at Lebanon, and Fort Campbell was named for him in 1950.
- 3B 5 Bledsoe’s Lick
Bledsoe's Lick was a gathering place for game, and the first settlers came in 1779. Isaac and Anthony Bledsoe settled here with their families in 1787; both brothers were killed by Indians and are buried in the family plot 500 yards northwest. Bledsoe Female Academy was nearby.
- 3B 7 Cragfont
Cragfont, 0.7 mile north, was completed in 1802 by Maryland artisans for Gen. James Winchester, a War of 1812 brigadier and a founder of Memphis with Andrew Jackson and John Overton. He is buried in the family plot behind the house.
- 3B 18 William Brimage Bate
William Brimage Bate was born 1.2 miles north on October 7, 1826. A steamboat officer, Mexican War officer and Confederate major general, he was governor from 1883 to 1887 and U.S. senator from 1887 to 1903, and died in Nashville on March 9, 1905, where he is buried.
- 3B 20 Trousdale-Sumner
Sumner County was formed in 1786 and named for Gen. Jethro Sumner; Trousdale County was formed in 1870 and named for Gov. William Trousdale. Families on the Trousdale side of this line will be found in Sumner (or Smith) County records before 1870.
- 3B 24 Camp Trousdale
Camp Trousdale was an early training ground for Tennessee Confederate units, including the 7th, 16th, 18th, 20th, 32nd, 41st and 44th Infantry and the battalions that became the 1st Cavalry in May 1862. A useful list for anyone with a Confederate ancestor in these regiments.
- 3B 27 Morgan at Gallatin
On August 12, 1862, Col. John H. Morgan's 2nd Kentucky Cavalry captured the 200-man Federal garrison at Gallatin without a fight, then wrecked the railroad bridge, the tunnel north of town and the rolling stock, cutting the Louisville to Nashville line.
- 3B 28 Morgan and Johnson August 20, 1862
On August 20, 1862, Morgan's cavalry met Brig. Gen. R. W. Johnson's Federal cavalry (2nd Indiana, 4th and 5th Kentucky, 7th Pennsylvania) along this road; after a four-hour running fight Johnson and about 175 men were captured. Context for service and prisoner records of these regiments.
- 3B 29 Beech Cumberland Presbyterian Church
Thomas Craighead organized this congregation in 1798; the Cumberland Presbyterian Church's first synod met here on October 5, 1813, and the stone church dates from 1828. The cemetery, deeded in 1799, holds early settlers including surveyor William Montgomery and Revolutionary soldiers Francis Catron (Ketring) and John McMurtry.
- 3B 32 Hugh Rogan
Irish immigrant Hugh Rogan (1747 to 1814) came with the Donelson party in 1780, signed the Cumberland Compact and built Rogana, two miles east, in 1800. Rogana was the Mass station for area Catholics until St. Peter's in Gallatin was built in 1844, a pointer for early Catholic sacramental records.
- 3B 33 Ziegler’s Station
Joseph Ziegler built this station near Bledsoe Creek in 1790. In 1791 a war party killed ten people and took eighteen prisoners; all were later ransomed by Gen. James White, brother of captive Sarah White Wilson. A lead for families with settlers killed or captured in 1791.
- 3B 35 Trousdale Place
Built by John Bowen before 1820, this Gallatin house was bought in 1822 by William Trousdale, governor from 1849 to 1851. In 1900 Annie Berry Trousdale, widow of his son Julius, a Confederate veteran, gave it to the UDC's Clark Chapter No. 13.
- 3B 36 General William Hall
Maj. William Hall, a Revolutionary veteran, settled here in 1785 and built a station; he and two sons were killed a few years later. His son Gen. William Hall, born in North Carolina in 1775, became governor and congressman, died in 1856 and is buried with his father near Hall's Station.
- 3B 37 Tyree Springs
R. C. Tyree opened a mineral springs resort here between 1814 and 1822; Presidents Jackson and Polk were guests. It burned during the Civil War, was rebuilt, and received guests until the early 1930s.
- 3B 38 Bledsoe's Fort and Monument
The Bledsoe monument, a tenth of a mile northwest, marks the graves of Revolutionary veterans Anthony and Isaac Bledsoe. Isaac's fort, built in 1783 about 200 yards west, sheltered nearby families during attacks, and both brothers were killed near it.
- 3B 41 First Presbyterian Church American Presbyterian and Reformed Historical Site
Gallatin's First Presbyterian Church was organized October 25, 1828, and its 1836 to 1837 building is the oldest church building in the town still in use. The sanctuary served as a Federal hospital during the Civil War.
- 3B 43 General Griffith Rutherford
Gen. Griffith Rutherford, Revolutionary commander in western North Carolina and president of the Southwest Territory's legislative council, lived three miles south from 1792 until his death in 1805. His unmarked grave is said to be in Shiloh Graveyard, 300 yards north.
- 3B 44 Howard Schools
This Gallatin campus was home to a run of schools: Gallatin Female Academy (1824 to 1836), Sumner Female Academy, Howard Female Institute, Neophogen College, Howard Female College (to 1922) and Howard Elementary (1923 to 1977). The dates help match a school named in a family letter or obituary.
- 3B 45 Bridal House
Thomas Cotton, a Revolutionary militia captain from Hertford County, North Carolina, founded Cottontown in 1795. His son Moore Cotton built Bridal House in 1819 for his only daughter, Elizabeth. A lead for Cotton families who came from Hertford County.
- 3B 48 Randy’s Record Shop
Randy Wood's Randy's Record Shop (1946 to 1991) in Gallatin became the world's largest mail-order record business through ads on WLAC, and in 1950 Wood started Dot Records.
- 3B 49 Cold Spring School: Circa 1857-1933
Thomas Baskerville donated land in May 1857 for a school and meetinghouse at Cold Spring, 2.8 miles northeast. It was a Camp Trousdale hospital early in the war, and David Lipscomb organized the Portland Church of Christ there in 1866. The schoolhouse was moved to Richland Park in 1975.
- 3B 50 Big South Tunnel
On August 12, 1862, Morgan's raiders, aided by Gallatin citizens, wrecked the Big South Tunnel on the L&N Railroad by crashing a locomotive into it, cutting Union supply to Nashville for 98 days.
- 3B 51 Tennessee Maneuvers World War II
The 35th Evacuation Hospital stood 0.8 mile east during the Second Army's Tennessee Maneuvers of 1942 to 1944, and troops camped around Portland. Local people gave troops a Christmas party at the Portland City Hall USO on December 17, 1943, a lead for wartime marriages to soldiers on maneuvers.
- 3B 52 Free Hill Road
Sumner County had 7,700 enslaved people in 1860. After the war freedpeople settled on this hill in the Rockland community, which oral tradition says gave Free Hill Road its name. Area roads were later named for some of the original families, which can point to family names for the community.
- 3B 53 William Henderson
Capt. William Henderson, a Virginia-born Revolutionary soldier, and his wife Lockey Trigg came in the late 1790s; Hendersonville is named for him and he was its first postmaster in 1801, followed by sons Bennett and Littleton. He was buried on this site around 1807.
- 3B 54 Rutherford-Kiazer Mound Complex
By 1350 A.D. this fourteen-acre site was a fortified Native American town with a platform mound, four burial mounds and a large habitation area, trading for copper, mica and conch shell.
- 3B 55 Parker's Chapel "Old Taylor Field"
Parker's Chapel began after the Civil War when descendants of formerly enslaved Sam and Lucinda Groves-Coakley settled at Taylor's Old Field, followed by Lucy Perdue and family from Virginia and the Dye, Hobdy and Gibbs families. Named for first pastor Rev. James Parker, it had a church by about 1870 and a Rosenwald school from 1923 to 1960.
- 3B 56 Station Camp Baptist Church
Elder Patrick Mooney organized Sumner County's first Baptist church in November 1796. William Phipps gave land in 1800, when it became Phipps Meeting House, and the Leggett family added land in the 1830s; in 1846 it moved here because of flooding. Look under each name in Baptist association records.
- 3B 58 Scattersville Community
Scattersville grew from part of the John Buntin plantation; early families of African descent included Buntin, Bell, Brewer, Duncan, Greene and Gilbert. New Hope Baptist Church had a permanent building about 1880 under Rev. West Crocker, Mary Wallace was the first teacher, and Henry S. and Sarah Bell deeded land for a school around 1908.
- 3B 59 New Hope Baptist
New Hope Baptist began in a brush arbor in 1845; its first church was built in 1868, and J. E. Watkins deeded an acre in 1905 for the present building, completed in 1907 with timber from the old one.
- 3B 60 Morgan's Raiders at Cage's Ford November 21, 1861
On November 21, 1861, Col. John Hunt Morgan's Confederates on the south bank shelled the camp of the 31st Ohio Infantry across the Cumberland at Cage's Ford, with light casualties on both sides.
- 3B 61 Abraham “Abram” Bledsoe African American Frontiersman
Abram, enslaved by Col. Anthony Bledsoe, defended Greenfield against an April 27, 1793, attack and two months later killed the Cherokee leader Mad Dog in a canebrake. In 1813 he found the lost child Josephus Conn Guild and led him home. Anthony Bledsoe family and estate papers are the likeliest place to find him named.
- 3B 62 Cairo Rosenwald School 1923-1959
The Cairo Rosenwald School, 2.6 miles south, opened in 1923 as a one-teacher school for Black children, built with community, public and Rosenwald funds, and closed in 1959. It is now a community center.
- 3B 64 Highland Community
Adventist teachers Braden and Pearl Mulford with Forrest and Lulu West started the Fountain Head Industrial School (1907), a church (1909) and a sanitarium (1913) here. After fires in 1928 and 1935 the conference took over in 1945 and renamed them Highland Academy and Highland Hospital, so check both names for births, deaths and students.
- 3B 65 Invasion of Kentucky
The 2nd Tennessee Cavalry Battalion advanced into Kentucky as far as Munfordville, and Confederates under Brig. Gen. Simon B. Buckner occupied Bowling Green on September 18. Context for the early war service of local Confederate units.
- 3B 66 A. I. Thornburg Heath
A. I. Thornburg Heath joined the 9th Tennessee Cavalry on September 1, 1862, was captured at Hartsville in December 1862 and led 20 men out of prison at Bowling Green. Before the war he was a rifle maker at Heath Springs; his wife Martha Johnson (1848 to 1926) lost her father, 1st Lt. Richard E. Johnson of the 20th Tennessee, at Fishing Creek on January 19, 1862. The marker stands at Sherron Cemetery.
- 3B 67 Peter Vertrees 1840-1926
Peter Vertrees was born Peter Skaggs on December 16, 1840, in Edmondson County, Kentucky, and took the name of Jacob Vertrees, to whom he was apprenticed. He served with Dr. John L. Vertrees in the 6th Kentucky Infantry, received a Tennessee pension, and spent 61 years as a Gallatin Baptist minister. He died January 18, 1926, and is buried in Gallatin Cemetery; the name change matters for tracing him.
- 3B 68 Tennessee's First African-American Civil War Volunteers 1863
In July 1863 about 200 local freedmen enlisted on the Gallatin square and became part of the 13th U.S. Colored Infantry; two months later more recruits from Gallatin, Nashville and Murfreesboro formed the 14th Colored Infantry here. USCT service and pension files for these regiments can document Sumner County families.
- 3B 69 Zollicoffer’s Headquarters
Thomas Buntin's home, half a mile southeast near Maple Hill Cemetery, was Gen. Felix K. Zollicoffer's headquarters at Camp Trousdale in spring 1861. Zollicoffer was killed at Mill Springs on January 19, 1862, and buried in Nashville City Cemetery.
- 3B 70 Captain Ellis Harper (1842-1908)
Ellis Harper (1842 to 1908) was born nearby to Unionist parents Ezekiel and Sarah Ellis Harper, enlisted in Company I, 50th Tennessee, escaped from Camp Butler and led a partisan band against the L&N Railroad. He was shot by William Suite in Lebanon on June 25, 1908. A family split by the war, documented with names and dates.
- 3B 71 Town of Cairo
James Winchester and William Cage Jr. founded Cairo in 1799 on the Cumberland, and the county court met here from 1800 to 1803. The 1830 census showed 30 families in town. Cairo faded after Gallatin became county seat and was nearly empty by 1855, which matters when a record names this vanished town.
- 3B 72 The Colored Fair
In July 1870 Mack Randolph, Arthur Banks, Willie Baker, Dock Blythe, John Banks, Henry Ward and others bought land here for $650 for the Sumner County Colored Fair, said to be the first Black-owned agricultural fairground. The fair ran until 1976.
- 3B 73 Union High School 1922-1970
Union High School opened in 1922 on East Winchester Street as Sumner County's only secondary school for Black students; its first class graduated in 1924, it moved to this building in 1951, and its last senior class graduated in 1970. Yearbooks and class lists can place students.
- 3B 74 Fort Smith
Fort Smith stood at Mitchellville Station on the L&N, first a Union supply railhead after the South Tunnel was wrecked and, after November 26, 1862, a garrison under Col. George P. Smith of the 129th Illinois Infantry.
- 3B 75 Rose Mont
Catherine Blackmore (1806 to 1888) and Josephus Conn Guild (1802 to 1883) built Rose Mont about 1842 on a 500-acre plantation, and descendants lived here until 1993. Guild, a legislator and judge, was held at Fort Mackinac in 1862 for secessionist views and released after taking the oath.
- 3B 76 Union Fortifications at Buck Lodge
Union fortifications traditionally called Fort Mitchell stood 1.5 miles east at Buck Lodge from November 1862, garrisoned by the 106th Ohio Infantry and a battery of the 13th Indiana artillery. THC lists this marker as no longer standing.
- 3B 77 Bishop William McKendree
William McKendree, born in King William County, Virginia, served in the Revolution and saw the surrender at Yorktown, became the first American-born Methodist bishop in 1808, and moved here with his father and family two years later. He was first buried in the McKendree family cemetery and later reinterred at Vanderbilt.
- 3B 79 Rehoboth Church
Rehoboth began in the home of William Dillard in the late 1700s and is the oldest continuing congregation in the Methodist Tennessee Conference. It has also been a voting site and public school, so it may turn up in more than church records.
- 3B 80 City Cemetery / Mexican War Monument
Gallatin City Cemetery opened about 1818 on land from Felix Grundy. Burials include Gov. William Trousdale, Eliza Allen (Sam Houston's first wife), Judge Josephus Conn Guild and Revolutionary veterans James Trousdale and William Gillespie. Its 1848 Mexican War monument lists 55 Sumner County men of the Second and Tenth Legions and the Polk Guards.
- 3B 81 Jonathan Browning American Gunmaker and Pioneer 1805-1879
Gunmaker Jonathan Browning was born October 22, 1805, on his father's farm 3.4 miles west, apprenticed with Nashville gunsmith Samuel Porter, moved to Nauvoo about 1840 and in 1852 to Ogden, Utah, where his son John M. Browning founded Browning Arms. A trail from Sumner County to Illinois and Utah.
- 3B 84 First Baptist Church
Rev. Robert Belote founded Union Church here in 1865, the oldest known Black congregation in Sumner County; Columbus Johnson, Emanuel Wallace and Reubin Carr, trustees of the Freedmen's School, bought the lot on November 20, 1866. It later became First Baptist under Rev. Peter Vertrees and housed the county's first Black high school classes from 1920 to 1922.
- 3B 88 Moye Green Boarding House (1890-1945)
The Moye family and their descendants, the Greens, ran this boarding house across from the Portland depot from about 1890 to about 1945, housing travelers and strawberry field workers. A boarder in a Portland census may well have lived here.
- 3B 89 First Settlers in Middle Tennessee
In 1776 Thomas Sharp Spencer of Botetourt County and John Holladay of Bedford County, Virginia, lived in a hollow sycamore here and planted corn. Holladay later joined James Robertson's party, signed the Cumberland Compact and died in Virginia in 1812; Spencer was killed in 1794 near Crab Orchard in present Smith County.
- 3B 90 Civil War Skirmish at Pilot Knob AUGUST 20, 1862
On August 20, 1862, Morgan's 2nd Kentucky Cavalry attacked 50 men of the 50th Indiana under Capt. A. H. Miller at the Station Camp Creek bridge and freed 40 of the 130 Gallatin citizens the Union detachment had arrested for Southern sympathies. The Indiana company lost 3 killed and 46 captured.
- 3B 91 Civil War Skirmish at Saundersville AUGUST 20, 1862
Near the vanished town of Saundersville, 126 men of the 50th Indiana under Lt. Col. H. Heffren drove off 150 Confederates of Company F, 2nd Kentucky Cavalry, who lost two killed and eight wounded while burning the railroad bridge on August 20, 1862.
- 3B 92 Civil War Skirmish at Drake's Creek August 20, 1862
Capt. P. Rous and seventy men of the 50th Indiana held the stockade at the Drake's Creek bridge against Morgan's cavalry, keeping twenty of the 130 Gallatin citizens they had arrested and saving the bridge.
- 3B 93 Civil War Skirmish at Mansker's Creek August 20, 1863
At the Mansker's Creek bridge Morgan's 2nd Kentucky Cavalry attacked sixty men of the 50th Indiana under Lt. J. H. Johnson; two were killed, fifty-two captured and the bridge burned. The marker's title dates this to August 20, 1863, while its companion markers on the same fight give 1862.
- 3B 94 Hendersonville, Louisville & Nashville Railroad Depot
The Hendersonville L&N depot stood here, 18 miles from Nashville. The line changed hands several times in the Civil War, and a Confederate soldier was killed in a skirmish here on November 15, 1864.
Newspapers
Structured transcriptions
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Sumner County finding-aid batch (parity expansion)
Grantor Grantee Year Book:page Grantor01, Example Grantee01, Example 1760 A:5 Grantor02, Example Grantee02, Example 1768 B:9 Grantor03, Example Grantee03, Example 1776 C:13 Grantor04, Example Grantee04, Example 1784 — Grantor05, Example 1792 — Grantor06, Example Grantee06, Example 1800 F:25
Cemeteries & burial research
- Sumner County cemeteries & churchyards
Societies & repositories
- Sumner County public library / local history desk
- Sumner County historical / genealogical societies
- Tennessee State Library & Archives (TSLA)
- Tennessee State Library and Archives (TSLA)
- Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture
- TeVA Digital Collections
- Chronicling America / TN newspaper research
- Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture
Vital records
Early vitals multi-source.
Census
Federal census; tax lists.
Courthouse & contacts
Sumner County courthouse, Gallatin.
If not found here, try…
- Formed 1786
- Parent / earlier jurisdiction Davidson / early Cumberland — check district-era records before this county existed (districts guide).
Sources & further reading
- Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture
- County formation & boundaries
- Place-names & communities
- Tennessee State Library and Archives (TSLA)
- Chronicling America / TN newspaper research
- Chronicling America (Library of Congress)
- FamilySearch Wiki · TNGenWeb