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Sumner County, Tennessee was created from Davidson County in 1786 and was itself the parent county of Smith and Wilson counties. Jay Guy Cisco's monograph on Sumner County was assembled from a series of articles that the author had published in the Nashville American in 1907 and that he subsequently revised and expanded for this book. In the preparation of his opus, the author had occasion to interview many survivors of the original settlers of Sumner County.

Cisco's opus emphasizes the founder and foundation of Sumner County, and, in fact, the work is substantially genealogical in content. The first fifty pages of the volume move rapidly over such topics as early exploration of the county, local topography, territorial laws and officials, early land owners, and, of course, Sumner County in the wars, particularly the Civil War. Thereafter, the work focuses on Sumner County pioneers and their families in a series of genealogical and biographical sketches of varying lengths, some of them illustrated. In addition to the featured families of Bledsoe, Cage, and Douglass, Sumner County researchers will discover essays on the following pioneers and their progeny: Anderson, Barrow, Barry, Bate, Bell, Bertinatti, Blackmore, Belmont, Bowen, Bowie, Breckenridge, Campbell, Carmack, Carr, Cisco, Clark, Desha, Donaldson, Ellis, Fulton, Gaines, Garth, Guild, Gwin, Hall, Hallum, Hammond, Hatton, Head, Judd, Lauderdale, Lindsey, Malone, Mansker, Martin, McKendree, Morgan, Morris, Odom, Parker, Peyton, Pickett, Read, Rogan, Rogers, Rutherford, Sanders, Sharkey, Shelby, Scurry, Smith, Spencer, Trousdale, Vanderbilt, Walton, Weatherred, Williams, Wilson, Winchester, and Wynne.

There can be little question that this is one of the starting points for genealogical research into Sumner County, Tennessee.