Finding Aids: Pathways to Georgia History
Cumming Letters: 17 and 25 Family Founder
17.    May 22 - Washington, Robert McRea to Thomas Cumming, Merchant; Augusta. Has returned from the frontiers of Franklin and Johnson Counties; fruitless inquiry for the land of Wm. Patterson. Has been hinted that there never was any legal survey made of the 200,000 tract.  ALS

20. August 31 - Baltimore, Wm. Patterson to Thomas Cumming, Augusta,Georgia. Relates financial transactions over tobacco. Discussion of land business, He did not suppose that fraudulent titles could issue from Cumming’s state. ALS - from calendar compiled by Mary Ann Cashin

Thomas Cumming (1735-1834), the founder of the Augusta Cumming clan, was Augusta’s first Intendant (Mayor). In spite of the difficulty in representing clients who may have been affected by the fallout from the Yazoo land fraud, he died with his good reputation intact. “I trust I may be pardoned for speaking of his life as that of the good and just man … If a breath of reproach ever attached to the name of this good citizen, it has not reached the ears of his descendants…” Illustration and quote from A Sketch of the Descendants of David Cumming and Memoirs of the War Between the States / written by Joseph Bryan Cumming ; edited by Mary Gairdner Smith Cumming (Mrs. Bryan Cumming) S.C. CS71.C96X

Yazoo Act Burning


The burning of the Yazoo Act, which resulted in the Yazoo land fraud of 1795, took place on the grounds of the capitol building in Louisville. Louisville served as the state capital from 1796 until 1806, when the legislature moved to Milledgeville
Photograph and text from The New Georgia Encyclopedia http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Home.jsp.
Consult this resource for more on the Yazoo land fraud.