| Notes |
- John Cuthbert is recorded as "John Cuthbert of Drakies" in the passenger list for the ship, Prince of Wales, which set sail from Inverness, Scotland in Oct 1735 and arrived in Georgia, USA on 10 JAN 1736. John is shown with fellow passengers, George Cuthbert of Inverness and another John Cuthbert. However, it would appear this 1736 passage was not his first trip across as John is also recorded as "Capt. John Cuthbert" serving under General James Oglethorpe who founded the state of Georgia, and as having received a grant of 500 acres of land at Joseph's Town on the south bank of the Savannah River (near the present-day city of Savannah, Georgia, USA), along with Capt. Patrick Mackay, Capt. George Dunbar and others on 3 SEP 1735.
Capt. John Cuthbert planted a grove of Mulberry trees on his property in order to assist with the state of Georgia's fledgling silk industry. Silk worms thrive on Mulberry leaves. Capt. Cuthbert named his plantation Mulberry Grove.
Running a plantation was costly and difficult to make profitable. At the time, Georgia did not permit slavery, whereas the neighbouring state of South Carolina did. Thus the plantation owners in Georgia felt they were at a distinct financial disadvantage to their neighbouring plantation owners across the Savannah River. In 1735 the Georgia plantation owners petitioned for permission to use slave labour, but their petition was rejected.
There was a John Cuthbert in Darien, Georgia, USA who on 3 JAN 1738 signed a petition against slavery with members of the Darien Colony, New Inverness, Georgia, USA. It is believed that the John Cuthbert who signed this petition was not Capt, John Cuthbert of Mulberry Grove who had already participated in a petition in favour of introducing slavery. It is believed that the petioner in Darien was the other John Cuthbert from the ship, Prince of Wales.
In 1739, John Cuthbert "of Drakies" (believed to be Capt. John Cuthbert of Mulberry Grove) and George Cuthbert of Inverness (believed to be his cousin) were witnesses to a treaty between the Creek Indians in Georgia and Gen. James Oglethorpe. (Bulloch)
Capt. John Cuthbert seems to have been an exceptionally competent plantation manager as Mulberry Grove appears to have been the only plantation in the Savannah area that prosperred. However, that prosperity was cut short in 1739 by the untimely death of Capt. John Cuthbert due to illness.
Capt. John Cuthbert never married and had no children. He passed the estate of Mulberry Grove to his sister, Ann Cuthbert.
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Mulberry Grove
From Savannah River Plantations, Edited by Mary Granger, Savannah Writers' Project, The Georgia Historical Society, Savannah, 1947. http://content.ancestry.com/Browse/BookView.aspx?dbid=22927&iid=dvm_LocHist008471-00077-1
Mulberry Grove from its beginnings as a plantation embraced 500 acres; and though today the tract encompasses hardly more than its original size, at the peak of its history it took in 2171 acres. To trace this expansion, a brief note is necessary regarding the activities of the "Scots gentlemen" who early in 1736 settled the district.
According to tradition, these Scotsmen were Capt. John Cuthbert, Capt. Patrick Mackay, Capt. George Dunbar, and Thomas Bailey, who received each a grant of 500 acres, and Archibald McGillvray whose grant was for 50 acres. there is definite authority for asserting the the first three men were at Joseph's Town, but the only grounds for placing the other two in this district are that the names of all five were recorded together in a list of land petitions read at a meeting of the Trustees of Georgia, 3 SEP 1735.
It will be noted that a sixth colonist, John Mackay, appears on the list. This was Patrick Mackay's brother whose grant has been definitely placed at Joseph's Town, but of whose activities there no more is known than of Bailey's and McGillivray's. It is appropriate to mention here that as far as available colonial records are concerned, none of these three ever settled in the Joseph's Town district. Moreover, in June 1738, William Stephens, agent of the Georgia Trustees, wrote in his journal: "we took boat, and went back to Joseph-Town, where in our way up the river before, we had viewed the plantations of Mess. Pat McKay, Dunbar, and Cuthbert."
It is possible that though the grants of the colonists in question were at Joseph's Town, they never settled on or cultivated these lands; or else very shortly after coming to the district they departed for other sections of the colony. Certainly it is true that in the first two years of Joseph's Town's existence its conditions were such as to discourage any settler. In fact, John Cuthbert, owner of Mulberry Grove, was the only one of the Scotsmen to make an outstanding success of his land in spite of the odds against him.
Not at all in conformity to the little square on the 1735 map was the actual laying out of Joseph's Town's area. The grants were spread along the river, each comprising 500 or more acres. It is definitely established that the easternmost was Captain Dunbar's grant, that the next was Captain Cuthbert's, present sit of Mulberry Grove, that the third was Capt. Patrick Mackay's, which later became a part of Mulberry Grove, and that the fourth was the tract of John Mackay, deserted probably from its granting. Adjoining John Mackay's was the grant that might possibly have been Thomas Bailey's. Black Creek, curving from the west, cut a wide rich belt of swampland through the inland section of the territory and flowed across the eastern end of Cuthbert's land into the Savannah River.
Regardless of the name given to the district, it is doubtful if the Scotsmen had in mind the development of a municipality, as they were settled far from each other. They evidently desired to become an independent district, however, for in 1735 they petitioned for self-government and were refused.
At this time slavery was prohibited in the Colony of Georgia, and even for field work indentured white labour was used. In the almost tropical climate of Joseph's Town white workers sickened of "fevers and fluxes". Thus the settlers discovered that their lands, owing to the labour conditions, were investments operating at a heavy loss. They petitioned the Trustees "for the liberty of making use of negro slaves" but the petition was rejected and the outlook was indeed a discouraging one.
The Mulberry Grove tract was the only one in the Joseph's Town that was kept tenaciously to the original purpose of development into a plantation. It's owner, Captain Cuthbert, appears to have been an earnest and industrious young colonist, eager to cooperate with the Trustees in their desire to develop the silk industry, for he immediately set out a mulberry nursery that was eventually to give the plantation its name. That he built a house may be gathered from the information that he and his sister resided on the place. He also probably constructed the barns for cattle and the other farm buildings. By 1739, thirty acres of the tract had been cleared and planted in general crops.
Before the close of the year this propitious beginning of the plantation's activities was halted by the death of Captain Cuthbert. Having been placed in command of a company of rangers and sent by Oglethorpe to South Carolina to buy horses and equipment, "he unhappily sickened and died in that country...news of his death occasioned grief to many people, being a good-natured, sprightly man, generally beloved; ...He had made considerable improvements upon his five hundred acres up the River Savannah and was judged to have one of the best plantations yet in the colony: He died unmarried, leaving a sister (who took care of his house)...." The five hundred acres were inherited by Cuthbert's sister, Ann, for in the very year of the young Scotsman's death, the Trustees' regulation was lifted whereby only a male relative was entitled to inherit land.
On March 5, 1740, Ann Cuthbert became the wife of Patrick Graham. Some time before his marriage, Dr. Graham, physician and apothecary, had given up his practice and by 1740 was considered "so industrious a planter that he maintained himself." The romantic circumstances surrounding his courtship of Ann Cuthbert and consequent removal to Mulberry Grover were reported to the Trustees by William Stephens in his journal:
Mr. Patrick Graham, Surgeon, who has made considerable improvement in building on his lot in this town, as well as been a constant planter for two or three years past, having Mrs. Cuthbert (sister to the late Capt. Cuthbert, deceased) for his patent dangerously ill in a fever, at that time a lodger in his house, the Doctor took the opportunity of prescribing matrimony to her, as a specifick he was sure would compleat her cure; and on consenting to take his advice in it, they were married at her late brother's plantation.
[Dr. Graham died on 30 MAY 1755 and his will leaves his lands to his brother (un-named), a relative named Mungo Graham, and to his widow, Ann Cuthbert. Thus it would appear that Dr. Graham and Ann Cuthbert had no children.]
In 1758 Mrs Graham married James Bulloch, a planter of South Carolina, and through a marriage contract vested the ownership of Mulberry Grove in her new husband.
Ann died 19 MAY 1764 and James Bulloch continued as proprietor of Mulberry Grove. James Bulloch sold Mulberry Grove on 19 NOV 1770 to Josiah Perry.
Mulberry Grove became famous later for the activities of it's later proprietor, Widow Catherine Greene, who was mistress to President George Washington, and Eli Whitney who invented the cotton gin at Mulberry Grove.
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Abt 1701 - 1739 (~ 37 years)
