John Bunnell Sumner
1838 - 1918
Methodist
Biography
John Bunnell Sumner was an American Methodist clergyman and church musician born at Wyalusing, Pennsylvania, in 1838. A near-contemporary family genealogy records that he married Alma L. Gardner in 1861, raised a family, and was settled at Binghamton, New York, by the late 1870s. Institutional and hymnal sources consistently identify him as a Methodist minister and as the musician responsible for the setting associated with A Child of the King.
In 1877 Sumner set Harriet E. Buell's text to the melody now known as BINGHAMTON, named for the New York city with which he was associated. Hymnary's tune authority credits him as composer and dates the tune to 1877. An 1890 hymnal, however, labels his contribution as an arrangement from a melody, showing that early printed attribution was not completely uniform. Modern hymnals overwhelmingly credit Sumner for the familiar tune.
Reliable documentation of a larger Sumner musical catalog is limited, so his historical significance is best stated modestly: BINGHAMTON became a durable gospel-hymn setting and carried Buell's testimony into hundreds of hymnals. Sumner died at Binghamton in 1918.
In 1877 Sumner set Harriet E. Buell's text to the melody now known as BINGHAMTON, named for the New York city with which he was associated. Hymnary's tune authority credits him as composer and dates the tune to 1877. An 1890 hymnal, however, labels his contribution as an arrangement from a melody, showing that early printed attribution was not completely uniform. Modern hymnals overwhelmingly credit Sumner for the familiar tune.
Reliable documentation of a larger Sumner musical catalog is limited, so his historical significance is best stated modestly: BINGHAMTON became a durable gospel-hymn setting and carried Buell's testimony into hundreds of hymnals. Sumner died at Binghamton in 1918.
Hymns by John Bunnell Sumner
A Child of the King
Role: Composer