A child of Increase Sumner and Sarah Hope Staples, Rebecca (sometimes spelled Rebekah) was born around 1682 in the town of Dorchester, Massachusetts Bay Colony.[1]
Around 1696-7, the family of Increase Sumner migrated to Berkeley County, in the Colonial Carolinas, to join a newly formed Congregationalist community, named Dorchester. Increase Sumner had been one of a group of nine men who explored the area and chose the new location.[2]
By 1707, Rebecca had married Moses Norman, whose father was also a founder of the Dorchester community in South Carolina.[2]Their children were:[3]
In 1720, Rebecca's name appears on a conveyance of land from her and her husband Moses to Francis Holmes in Colleton County.[4]
Although we do not know the date and location of Rebecca's death and burial, we can state from the above conveyance that she died after 23 Nov 1720.
Rebecca is often confused with her first cousin, also named Rebecca Sumner, born in 1662, who was a daughter of her father's brother Samuel.
We are grateful to N. Grier Parke, author of "The Ancestry of Rev. Nathan Grier Parke & his wife Ann Elizabeth Gildersleeve" for his meticulous analysis of the identity of Rebecca Sumner, as Moses Norman's wife. [5]
The bottom line: (1) Moses' wife was named Rebecca (Rebekah).[6] (2) Moses was married to a daughter of Increase Sumner.[7] (3) Increase Sumner had eleven children, one not listed in the records.[8] In his book, Parke writes, "It is certain that Moses Norman married a daughter of Increase Sumner; we believe that her name was Rebecca and that she was mother of his children."[9]
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S > Sumner | N > Norman > Rebecca (Sumner) Norman
Categories: Colonial Berkeley County, South Carolina | Dorchester, Massachusetts | South Carolina Colonists