Cumberland, Maryland: From Washington Town to a Duke's Fort

In 1785 the new town at Will’s Creek was commonly called Washington Town. Two years later its people picked Cumberland, the old British fort’s name. And the fort had been named for the Duke of Cumberland, the man who ran the British army.

A fort with two names

The fort came first, during the war with the French. Will Lowdermilk’s 1878 History of Cumberland says Colonel Innes built a stockade on the hill between Will’s Creek and the Potomac River in the fall of 1754 and called it “Fort Mount Pleasant.”

That name didn’t last. Governor Dinwiddie soon got orders from England to put up a bigger fort at Will’s Creek. General Braddock, picked by the Duke of Cumberland to lead the next campaign, asked Dinwiddie to make room for 200 men and “announced that it should be named ‘Fort Cumberland,’ in honor of the Captain-General of the British army, who had honored him with so important a mission.” It went up in the winter of 1754–55. Henry Gannett’s U.S. Geological Survey bulletin of 1905 spells out who that was: “the Duke of Cumberland, the victor of Culloden.”

Washington Town

In 1783, Thomas Beall, “of Samuel,” as Lowdermilk calls him, bought a riverside tract called “Walnut Bottom” just below the mouth of Will’s Creek. Lowdermilk says that in 1785 Beall “laid out a town, which was commonly called Washington Town,” and sold lots to settlers. (J. Thomas Scharf’s 1882 History of Western Maryland dates the layout a little earlier, to October 4, 1784.)

Two years later, the people living there asked the legislature to make the town official. According to Lowdermilk, they wanted “to name after the old Fort, as being more appropriate and distinct than any other title that could be given it.” The act passed on January 20, 1787, and ordered the land laid out into lots and streets “to be erected into a town, and to be called and known by the name of Cumberland.”

Lowdermilk doesn’t say where “Washington Town” came from, and he doesn’t record anyone arguing over the change. The 1787 act itself places the spot “in Washington County,” which Cumberland belonged to then, so you can’t tell from his account whether the nickname pointed to the general or just to the county.

Before the fort

As it turns out, Will’s Creek has its own naming story. Lowdermilk writes that the stream once had an Indigenous name, Caiuctucuc, which was also the name of an Indian town where it met the river; a 1751 map, he says, still marks it “Caiuctucuc Creek.” The early settlers renamed it for “Will,” whom he describes as an Indian who stayed on with his family after the newcomers arrived and lived near the creek. One of the first land surveys there was even called “Will’s Town.” That’s Lowdermilk’s account from 1878, and you won’t find Will’s full name or his nation in it.

Sources & further reading

• Will H. Lowdermilk, History of Cumberland, (Maryland) (1878). Caiuctucuc, Indian Will, “Will’s Town” and Will’s Creek (pp. 21–22); Fort Mount Pleasant (p. 83); Braddock, Dinwiddie and the name “Fort Cumberland” (p. 88); Thomas Beall, Walnut Bottom, “Washington Town,” the 1787 petition and the act of January 20, 1787 (pp. 259–260).
• J. Thomas Scharf, History of Western Maryland (1882). Vol. 1, p. 79: “At the request of Gen. Braddock it was named Fort Cumberland, in honor of the captain-general of the British army.” Vol. 2, p. 1360, has Beall laying out the town on October 4, 1784; p. 1390 quotes a centennial speech that names him: “the Duke of Cumberland, then captain-general of the British army.”
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States (USGS, 1905), p. 97. The city in Allegany County “named for the Duke of Cumberland, the victor of Culloden.”
• GNIS feature 590057 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record and coordinates for Cumberland.