Sumner (Charles) is born in Boston.

The son of Charles and Relief (Jacob) Sumner, Charles Sumner grows up at 20 Hancock Street, graduates from Boston Latin School, Harvard College, and Harvard Law School, and, after traveling in Europe, teaches at Harvard Law School. He becomes an abolitionist and a founder of both the Free Soil Party and the Republican Party in Massachusetts, and serves in the U.S. Senate (1851-1874), where he suffers a savage beating in 1856.* A dour man, his friend William Story once said, “Sumner had “[no sense of humor] and little sense of it in others . . . [and was] almost impervious to a joke.” Sumner dies in Washington, D.C. on March 11, 1874, and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery.