Moses & Catherine Sumner and Daughters

Moses Sumner (1800-1862)

Catherine Gay Sumner (1803-1899)

Moses Sumner was born on July 23, 1800 to Nathaniel Sumner and Elizabeth Smith Sumner. Moses was the brother of Joseph Sumner who became the proprietor of the South Dedham Tavern.

Moses Sumner married Catherine Gay on November 19, 1821. Catherine Gay had been born on August 20, 1803 and spent her early life on a farm on Pleasant Street along the Norwood/East Walpole line, an area of South Dedham known as the Fuller or Gould neighborhood. The couple had three daughters: Martha (1822-1902), Julia (1824-1859), and Sarah (1826-1849).

Moses Sumner was one of the original employees in Deacon Willard Everett’s cabinet making business.

Willard Everett & Co. was destroyed by fire in 1865 never to be rebuilt.

In 1848, daughter Sarah, then 21, married David Morse who was also employed as a cabinet maker at Everett’s factory. She died the following year on November 11, 1849. David remarried in 1852 but died of consumption at the age of 32 on April 10, 1859. Both Sarah and David are interred with her parents.

Daughter Martha Sumner married twice. First to Charles Thurston Pond in 1841; Pond died in 1846. Martha married Ebenezer C. Day on February 13, 1847; he died in 1873. Martha Sumner Pond Day died in 1902. She and both her husbands are interred in the Sumner family lot as well.

In 1902 Martha Sumner Pond Day was living in this Nahatan St. house

Moses Sumner died on December 6, 1862 of brain congestion.

For a considerable time after her husband’s death, Mrs. Sumner lived in a house along Washington Street near what became the Norwood Press. She had four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren and was well-known in the community and regarded as “a general favorite with old and young.” She died on January 30, 1899 of heart disease at 95.

Catherine Gay Sumner lived in this vicinity after her husband's death