Jesse Lumm of Loudoun County, VA

The most valuable document relative to Jesse Lumm that has thus far been found is his 1835 application for a pension for service in the Revolutionary War. In that document, Jesse states the following details:

He was born in North Carolina on May 12, 1764;
He never knew his father; his mother took him as an infant to Loudoun County, where a grandfather also lived [probably the mother's father];
He lived in Loudoun County until 1818, when he moved to Columbiana County, Ohio;
He lived in Ohio for 14 years, then moved to Allegheny County, Pennsylvania for two years, and then to Beaver County, PA, where he applied for the pension.

The pension does not name any of his forebears, but has a couple of further clues:

After his first tour of duty (in 1780), he returned to Loudoun County to live with his mother. (At the time he was 16.)
After his second tour of duty, he lived in Loudoun County with his grandfather (suggesting his mother may have died while he was away).
After his third and last tour of duty, he returned to Loudoun County -- but relatives are not named, suggesting that the grandfather may have died as well.
Jesse appears in a few other documents in Loudoun County, notably lists of Tithables for 1781, 1782, and 1784; and the Personal Property tax lists of 1788 and 1789. In all of these, Jesse is identified in the household of others: in 1781 and 1782 with Nicholas Osburn; in 1784 with Richard Thatcher; in 1788 with Ann Peyton; and in 1789 with Nathan Huttleson. Jesse is also known to have worked as a farm hand for Abner Osburn, son of Nicholas, so these various families may represent his employers. The Osburns, however, are probably related, as Nicholas married a Mary Lumm, mother of Abner, who was born ca. 1756. She may have been his grandmother, and Nicholas his step-grandfather, and thus the one mentioned in the pension application. The case for this is made from an assortment of records in my Mid-Atlantic file. If this hypothesis is correct, Jesse's father was also a Jesse, his mother was Mary Clowes, and his grandfather was Jonas Lumm who died in 1744. Jonas (b. 1710 in Cecil Co., MD, perhaps son of a Samuel), married Mary Massey, who later married Nicholas Osburne.

The pension application and the 1840 census reveal that Jesse could not read or write. Though a simple farm hand, Jesse apparently eventually married and, later in Ohio, obtained his own property. No actual documents of his marriage or his children's births have yet surfaced, but the U.S. Census records from 1810 on show him as head of a family, and a number of younger Lumms identify themselves as being born in Virginia; their residential proximity to Jesse at various times hint at the possibility that he was their father. Among these individuals (with birth dates estimated from the census):
Jonas Lum (1798); Nancy (Lumm) Fowler (ca. 1805); Caroline Lumm (ca. 1806); Fenton Lumm (ca. 1810); Amanda, a.k.a. Miranda Lum (ca. 1811); and Mortomer Hampton Lumm (1816). [For details on them and other possible relatives, see Midwest Lumms page

The fact that the youngest of these, Mortomer Hampton Lumm, was born in Loudoun County, VA, and lived in Beaver County, PA, suggests that he may be Jesse's son by a second wife; for in 1850, a Mary Lumm 20 years his senior lives with Mortomer.

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