Augusta, Georgia: The Princess the History Books Mixed Up

Augusta, Georgia, carries the name of a royal princess, and for a long time the people writing its history couldn’t agree on who she was. One called her a king’s daughter. Another married her to the wrong man. She was Augusta, wife of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and you can sort out the family tree in a minute.

Oglethorpe’s post below the falls

James Oglethorpe wanted a foothold up the Savannah River. Charles C. Jones Jr. writes in the 1890 Memorial History of Augusta that toward the close of 1735, Oglethorpe ordered a town marked out at the head of navigation, “just below the falls.” The idea was to win for Georgia the trade with Native nations that South Carolina had kept to itself. “In honor of a royal princess he called it Augusta,” Jones says.

It worked fast. A sworn report on the colony, dated November 10, 1740 and quoted by Jones, says the town “was laid out by the Trustees’ Orders, in the Year 1735, which has thriven prodigiously.” The same report says more than 2,000 horses came in with the traders each spring.

Which princess?

The early books are vague. George White’s Historical Collections of Georgia (1854) says Oglethorpe named it “in honour of one of the royal princesses,” and the 1906 Cyclopedia of Georgia says almost the same thing. The U.S. Geological Survey’s 1905 book of place-name origins, compiled by Henry Gannett, gets closer: the city was “named for the royal princess Augusta.”

Then the details went sideways. Salem Dutcher, who wrote the later chapters of that 1890 Augusta history, closed his account by saying the city “was named after the Princess Augusta, one of the daughters of King George the Second.” Lucian Lamar Knight, writing in 1913, went with the Princess of Wales instead, but described her as the woman “whose royal consort afterwards became George III.”

Sorting out the family tree

Neither one is quite right. Britain’s Dictionary of National Biography (1889) has the facts in its entry on Frederick, Prince of Wales. Frederick was “eldest son of George II and Queen Caroline, and father of George III.” He married “the Princess Augusta, daughter of Frederick, duke of Saxe-Gotha,” at St. James’s on April 26, 1736. Frederick died in 1751, before his father, so he never became king. Augusta lived on to see the coronation of her son, George III, and died in 1772.

So Augusta was George II’s daughter-in-law, not his daughter, and she was the mother of George III, not his wife. The New Georgia Encyclopedia identifies the city’s namesake the same way, as Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, wife of Frederick, Prince of Wales.

One more wrinkle, if you like dates. Jones puts Oglethorpe’s order at the close of 1735, and the wedding came in April 1736. Knight ties the name to the Princess of Wales through the fort built in 1736.

“The proud city”

Dutcher may have misplaced the princess, but he had a line ready for her name. Augusta, he wrote, “has always been as its name imports, the proud city.”

Sources & further reading

• Charles C. Jones Jr. and Salem Dutcher, Memorial History of Augusta (1890). Oglethorpe’s order, the trade with South Carolina, and the “royal princess” (p. 25); the sworn report of 1740 (pp. 25-26); Dutcher’s “daughters of King George the Second” and “the proud city” (p. 191).
• George White, Historical Collections of Georgia (1854), p. 593. Named by Oglethorpe for “one of the royal princesses.”
• Allen D. Candler and Clement A. Evans, eds., Cyclopedia of Georgia, vol. 1 (1906). The Augusta entry: 1735, the foot of the falls, “one of the royal princesses.”
• Lucian Lamar Knight, Georgia’s Landmarks, Memorials and Legends, vol. 1 (1913). Fort Augusta and the Princess of Wales (p. 113); the Richmond County sketch (p. 880).
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905). “Named for the royal princess Augusta.”
• Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 20 (1889), “Frederick Louis, Prince of Wales.” Frederick’s parents and son, his marriage to Augusta of Saxe-Gotha on April 26, 1736, and her death in 1772.
• Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 21, “George II.” George II’s dates, 1683 to 1760, and his eight children, none of them named Augusta.
• New Georgia Encyclopedia, “Augusta.” Names the city’s namesake as Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, wife of Frederick, Prince of Wales.
• GNIS feature 310670 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record: founded 1735, state capital from 1786 to 1796.