Henry Harford Cumming

Henry Harford Cumming (1799–1866) was an important figure in antebellum Augusta, Georgia.

His main business was in cotton but he also engaged J. Edgar Thomson to design the Augusta Canal, in order to run his mills and had started a law firm with politician George W. Crawford. His brother was Governor of Utah Territory Alfred Cumming and his son, Alfred Cumming, was a general in the Confederate States Army.

In 1799, Henry Harford Cumming was born to Thomas Cumming and Ann Clay, in Augusta, Georgia. In 1798, Cumming's father, Thomas, was the first mayor of Augusta, when the town was first incorporated. Henry Cumming's maternal grandfather was Joseph Clay, one of the first members from Georgia in the First Continental Congress. Clay was additionally a Deputy Paymaster General for the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Henry Cumming's brother, Alfred, was another mayor of Augusta and later the first non-Mormon governor of the Utah Territory.

Another brother of Henry H. Cumming, William, was offered the U.S Army's Quartermaster General position on two occasions, in 1818 and 1847. However, in 1822, William Cumming had gained a nationally notorious reputation when he fought George McDuffie in a duel, on two separate occasions which were believed to have been politically motivated.

John Forsythe, the U.S. Secretary of State at the time, had appointed Henry Cumming to be the U.S. Minister to Spain; mainly he would have served as an attaché at the American Legation. However, Cumming turned down the post; he decided to stay in Georgia to marry Julia A. Bryan of Hancock County.

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