Page News & Courier
Heritage and Heraldry
A casualty of war – the family of George W. Summers,
Sr.
Article of November 29, 2001
Likely a descendant of Hans George Sommer, George W.
Summers was not as Anglican as the surname may imply
at first glimpse. Hans George was born ca. 1713 in
the Palatinate and died on April 26, 1787 in Toms
Brook, Virginia. Most of Hans’ children settled in
Frederick, Shenandoah and Augusta County.
The first appearance of George W. Summers in Page
County vital records occurs in 1835 with his marriage
to Susannah Strickler. Susannah, the daughter of A.
and Susan Hollingsworth, was born in Shenandoah County
and had, apparently, married a Strickler prior to
marrying Summers. By 1845, the Summers family
included four daughters and one son.
With the outbreak of the Civil War, George W. Summers,
George Sr.’s only son enlisted with Co. D, 7th
Virginia Cavalry. By war’s end, he would command the
company as a captain.
However, the first traumatic episode of war in the
Summers family would occur with daughter Mary Summers
Strole. By 1862, Hiram and Mary Summers Strole had
two wonderful daughters – Amanda Susan (1857) and Mary
Lee Virginia (1859). But, in January 1862, not five
years old, Amanda died from sickness on the 22nd.
Four days later, wife Mary, followed in death. This
left only two-year-old Mary Lee with Hiram as the sole
parent. It seems unlikely that Hiram would enlist so
quickly in the aftermath of such tragedy and, perhaps,
he was one to be swept up into the draft that followed
early before that spring.
Listed on the rolls of the Page Grays, as a
precaution, Hiram made his last will and testament
which looked after the well-being of his only daughter
in the event of his death – leaving all of his “lands
and the benefits thereof.” In the event that Mary
would die, then all property would be divided among
two of his brothers – George and Abraham (later a
member of the Purcell Artillery and killed in the
trenches of Petersburg in days before the end of the
war in 1865) and sister-in-law, Susan.
In the months that followed, Hiram would brave the
elements and battles in the Valley, around Richmond
and finally, in the fields around Manassas. Though he
survived the intensely heated contest at Brawner Farm
on August 28, 1862, the following day, during a strong
Union attack, Hiram was killed. Captain Michael
Shuler wrote that after falling “back a short
distance, [they] were not able to get the dead off.”
Ultimately, Hiram’s body was recovered and brought
back to Page and buried next to his wife and daughter.
Within days of her third birthday on September 3,
Mary was an orphan.
Mary did survive and, with her marriage to Wilson
Asbury Koontz in 1878, began another branch of her
family that would include six boys and three girls.
The end of the war, as many know, did not bring relief
for the Summers family, as, on June 27, 1865, George
W., Jr. was executed without trial at Rude’s Hill.
Within six years of the end of the tragic war,
Susannah Summers died leaving George Sr. with what
appears from his writings, to have been a struggle
with depression over the loss of his only son. At
only 65 years of age, George W. Summers, Sr. died on
September 26, 1877.
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