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Chapter 1 The Rock Whence I Was Hewn I have no records of the original Summeralls in America. By family tradition, it is known that Thomas Summerall went to Florida and married a Spanish woman named Neunez in St. Augustine. He lived in south Florida by raising cattle and shipping them to Cuba. A son of Thomas Summerall named William was born probably about 1805 in Wayne County, Georgia. He married Hetty Wiggins and settled at Blount’s Ferry on the Suwannee River in Columbia County, Florida. Here, he acquired a plantation, owned slaves, and kept a store. When the Civil War came, he was quite prosperous. He had a number of children, including at least three sons and three daughters. The eldest, Elbanan Bryant Summerall, born July 5, 1827, remained on the plantation until he went into the Confederate army. In 1862, he married Margaret Cornelia Pelot at Greenwood, South Carolina. They were my parents. My sister, Meta Margaret Ann Summerall, was born July 4, 1863, my brother, William Bryant Summerall , was born April 29, 1865, and I was born March 4, 1867, all at Blount’s Ferry. During the Civil War, my father served in a Florida regiment1 that took part in opposing the Seymour expedition2 in Florida. He was mustered out on account of sickness. Throughout his life, my father had a passionate desire to study medicine, and his whole heart was in medical subjects. This aim was thwarted by the war, and his life was frustrated in consequence. He devoted all the time he could find to reading medicine, and, although the family had many illnesses, a doctor was rarely called. He treated us as effectively as the doctor could have done. We were too poor to pay doctors if we had needed them. After the war, when the slaves left the plantation, my grandfather moved to near Lake Butler, Florida, where he tried to farm and raise cattle. Later, he again moved to Falling Creek near Lake City, Florida, where he raised cattle and hogs on a small farm. For what 8 THE WAY OF DUTY, HONOR, COUNTRY reason I never knew, my grandfather and his first wife, Hetty Higgins , were divorced, and he married another woman by whom he had several children. My grandmother Summerall lived with us for several years at Providence, Florida. My mother’s home was Greenwood, South Carolina. She taught school from girlhood in various towns in South Carolina and in the Columbia Female Seminary. She also taught school in Quincy, Florida , where she probably met my father. For several years, my mother taught school at Providence, Florida, and in neighboring places. The pay was small, and the term was only three months. The people were impoverished by the war, and the struggle for a living was desperate. The records of my mother’s genealogy are quite complete. Jean Pelot and his wife, Marie Bossant, were French Huguenots who went to Switzerland on the Edict of Nantes.3 Their son Jonas Pelot (born 1695, died 1768) and his wife, Suzanne Marie Paquet, emigrated to South Carolina in the early migration. They probably settled in Purysburg on the Savannah River. They had three sons: John Francis Pelot, born in 1720, died in 1774; Captain James Charles Pelot, born in 1763, died in 1809; and Charles Moore Pelot, born 1791, died 1863. He [Charles Moore] married Margaret Ann Ford, and their daughter , Margaret Cornelia Pelot, married Elbanan Bryant Summerall. Charles Moore Pelot and his family left Purysburg about 1832, when it was abandoned,4 and settled at Greenwood, South Carolina. At the time of his death, Pelot appeared to live in Cokesbury, South Carolina. All the rest of the Pelot family left South Carolina and settled in Missouri immediately after the Civil War. My grandfather was an intellectual man without success financially. He taught school and was the railroad agent and postmaster at Hodges, South Carolina, at the time of his death. My mother and her brothers and sisters had unusual talent and character. Her brother James Malachi Pelot graduated from the Citadel, Charleston, South Carolina, studied medicine, and was a surgeon in the Confederate army. Thomas Postell Pelot, another brother, graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. When the Civil War began, he resigned from the U.S. Navy and was commissioned in the Confederate navy. He had a crew at Savannah but no ship. On a stormy night, he took his crew in rowboats and boarded and captured the U...

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