Colonial Fort Augusta Stone
Augusta, Richmond County, Georgia
Marker Inscription
This stone marks the site of the colonial Fort Augusta, built by order of General Oglethorpe and the Trustees in 1735, and known during the Revolution as Fort Cornwallis. St. Paul's Church was built in 1750, under a curtain of this fort.
The Story
When General James Oglethorpe's Georgia trustees ordered this fort raised in 1735, Augusta was the raw edge of Britain's youngest American colony—a fortified trading post on the Savannah River where deerskins moved between backcountry hunters and the coast. Within a generation the settlement had grown enough to build St. Paul's Church tucked beneath the fort's earthen curtain wall in 1750. During the Revolution the British renamed the strongpoint Fort Cornwallis and held it against Patriot forces, making this quiet churchyard ground the site of some of the war's hardest fighting in the Deep South.
Why it matters
Fort Augusta traces Georgia's arc from a fragile 1730s frontier outpost to a contested Revolutionary War prize, anchoring the story of how the colony's inland trade and its fight for independence unfolded on the same patch of riverbank.
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Related people
- · General James Oglethorpe
- · the Georgia Trustees
- · Lord Cornwallis
Related events
- · Founding of Fort Augusta (1735)
- · Siege of Augusta
Themes & tags
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