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Fort Augusta - Fort Cornwallis
- St. Paul's Church State Historical Marker
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Located at Sixth and Reynolds Sts. in Augusta
(Text)
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FORT AUGUSTA - FORT
CORNWALLIS
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ST. PAUL'S CHURCH
This site selected by fur traders Kennedy
O'Brien and Roger de Lacy as a trading post to be nearer the
Indians than Savannah Town, (in present Beech Island). To protect
them and others, General Oglethorpe in 1735 built here Fort Augusta
(so named after a royal Princess), maintaining a garrison until
1767. Here he met chiefs of the Chickasaws and Cherokees in 1739
to pacify them after a smallpox epidemic. In 1750, there was
built the first St. Paul's Church "under the curtain of the fort."
In 1763, chiefs of the Cherokees, Creeks, Catawbas, Chickasaws and
Choctaws met here with governors of Georgia, North and South Carolina
and Virginia and the King's representative and signed a treaty of
peace. Again, in 1773, Cherokees and Creeks here ceded two million
acres in North Georgia. During the Revolution, the British on this
spot erected Fort Cornwallis, which was captured by the Americans
by surprise September 14, 1780, but soon abandoned to the British.
In May, 1781, an attack under General Andrew Pickens and Lieutenant
Colonel "Light Horse Harry" Lee, and the use of a Mayham tower, forced
surrender by the British Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Brown,
capitulation taking place on June 5, 1781. In 1786 fortifications
removed and a new church built by the Trustees of Richmond Academy
for use by all denominations. In 1818 site conveyed to Trustees of
Episcopal Church, who constructed a new St. Paul's Church, which
was destroyed in the 1916 fire and replaced by the present structure.
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121-30 GEORGIA HISTORICAL
COMMISSION 1956
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Go to Richmond County Historical Markers page
Go to Georgia Historical Markers website
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