The Fighting Gamecock

      You may live in Sumter County or Sumter, "the Gamecock City," but do you know who Thomas Sumter was, when he lived, why he was famous, and why he was called "Gamecock?" It's quite a story!

      Thomas Sumter was born in a log cabin near Charlottesville, Virginia, in 1734, years before the United States was a country. As a young man, he worked as a surveyor, measuring and describing land in Virginia. Since surveyors sometimes worked in the woods of the frontier, they often met Native Americans. Because young Thomas learned to speak Cherokee, he could interpret for these people. He even traveled to England with a group of Native Americans to help them speak with the King of England. Although he was still in his twenties, he had come a long way from a log cabin to a royal palace.

     When Thomas Sumter returned to America, he lived in South Carolina for several months before returning to his native Virginia. He should have stayed in South Carolina! Some people in Virginia remembered that he owed them money and put him in prison for not paying his debts. Thomas added to his list of adventures when he escaped from prison and made his way back to South Carolina. He married, had a family, and became a planter.

     Life did not stay peaceful for Thomas Sumter. The American people wanted to be free of British rule. Soon Thomas Sumter was fighting in the Revolutionary War. He had a good reason to fight the British because they had burned his house and insulted his wife. Before long he became a brigadier general. He convinced other men to follow him. Leading Native Americans, frontiersmen, and settlers, he became known for his "hit and run" war, striking the British and then seeming to melt away. The men who fought by his side were loyal to their leader, perhaps because he made sure they were well-fed. Sometimes he had to "borrow" food for them from Tory families. The Tories were colonists who did not want to be free from Britain. General Sumter did not see this as stealing. It was called "Sumter's Law."

      During the Revolutionary War General Sumter earned the nickname "Gamecock." The story goes that he came upon two men who were watching Gamecocks, or fighting roosters. General Sumter urged the men to join him and fight the British. As the roosters struggled fiercely, one of the men looked at General Sumter and was said to have remarked, "Yonder goes a Gamecock." The name stayed with him!

      After the Revolutionary War, General Thomas "Gamecock" Sumter continued to serve his adopted state, South Carolina, and his country, the United States of America. He lived in Stateburg, where he farmed and raised horses. He lived a very long time. On the day before he died, in 1832, he went horseback riding. He was almost 100 years old!

      Today, over two hundred fifty years after he was born in a log cabin, you can see General Thomas Sumter, "The Fighting Gamecock" in a famous painting at the Sumter County Museum. You can be proud to live in Sumter County or Sumter, "the Gamecock City," and to know that these places were named for a man who helped make your country free.