𝙻𝚎𝚗𝚗𝚢 𝚂𝚞𝚖𝚖𝚎𝚛𝚜

Lenny Summers was born around 1880 to parents who had once been enslaved. His family’s struggles stretched back generations: his mother was born in a cotton field and taken from her own mother immediately by an overseer. Even after the Civil War, that same overseer continued tormenting Lenny’s grandmother until she finally killed him with a knife and fled, narrowly escaping a lynching. She never saw her mother again, but eventually found safety, married, and started a family—giving birth to the man who would become Lenny’s father.

Lenny’s father, Mr. Summers, was a literate and educated man who passed down his knowledge to his son, teaching him how to read and write. He also gave Lenny a pocket watch that had once belonged to his former owner, a treasured heirloom and reminder of resilience. Tragedy struck one night when a group of drunken men beat Mr. Summers to death. In an act of vengeance, the teenage Lenny killed his father’s murderers, but the act forced him to flee. Only fifteen years old, he was left to wander on his own.

By December 1898, while traveling through the Grizzlies, Lenny crossed paths with the Van der Linde gang and became one of their youngest members. Despite his youth, he quickly proved himself capable and loyal. During his time with the gang, he developed a romantic connection with Jenny Kirk, and her death weighed heavily on him. To make matters worse, during the chaos of the failed ferry robbery in Blackwater, Lenny lost the pocket watch his father had given him—an irreplaceable link to his past.