My Genealogy Hound

I. T. SUMMERS, who is engaged in farming in Everett township and was formerly identified with industrial interests of Woodson County for a number of years, was born in Richie County, West Virginia, September 18, 1847, a son of Elias S. and Miranda (Wilson) Summers, also natives of the same state. The father spent his entire life in West Virginia where he died in 1889, at the age of eighty years. His wife is still living at an advanced age. In their family were twelve children, of whom six are yet living.

Mr. Summers of this biographical notice was reared on the old homestead farm and his educational privileges were quite limited for at the time when he naturally would have been in school he was engaged in protecting his southern home from the raids of bushwhackers, for the Civil war was in progress and he was employed by the state to act as a state guard or scout to protect the property of the Union citizens. After a year spent in that way he enlisted in company E, Sixth West Virginia volunteer infantry, in October, 1864, and served until the close of the war. His duty was mostly in hunting and driving out the bushwackers, but his service was none the less arduous or dangerous and he had many narrow escapes from death, wounds and capture.

After the war Mr. Summers returned to his home and began to learn the stone mason’s trade, which he followed throughout the period of his residence in his native state. In 1873 he came to the west, knowing that he could secure a home sooner by coming to a new country. Accordingly he took up his abode in Woodson County, Kansas, where he continued to work at the stone mason’s trade until 1898. He was a good workman and always had employment, so that as the result of his industry and economy he was enabled to gain capital sufficient to purchase his present farm, a fine and well developed tract of eighty acres, located on Cherry creek, one mile south of Vernon, in Everett township. It is all bottom land and never fails to produce a good crop. He has a large barn, other substantial outbuildings and a comfortable residence, in fact all the modern equipments of a model farm of the twentieth century are found upon his place. When he arrived in Woodson County he had only eight dollars, so that all he now possesses has been acquired since coming to the Sunflower state, a fact which indicates that his life has been a busy one, characterized by indefatigable industry. In politics he is a staunch and uncompromising Republican, and socially he is a member of Tuscan Lodge, F. & A. M., at Neosho Falls.