Douglas K. Sanders

Cummer: A History of one of the Greatest Logging Families in America begins in the Everglades of Florida where the last old growth cypress trees are harvested in 1959.

Covering a period of nearly 250 years, readers will learn about:

John Henry Cummer, the first white child born in the wilderness of Ontario that is now the City of Toronto, Canada. He became an insurrectionist during the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837 and was arrested and put in jail.

Jacob Cummer, who moved his family in 1860 and established one of the largest sawmills in Michigan at Cadillac. He saw his company cut 700 million feet of white pine forest from 1876 to 1892 - more than half of all the sawmill operations recorded in the state at that time.

Wellington Cummer, who spent most of his life fighting heart disease but still managed to move his family to Jacksonville, Florida, and setting up the state’s largest phosphate and turpentine operations. The Cummer family was a major investor of Barnett National Bank of North America.

From the 1790s to 2015 the history of the Cummer logging family includes selling thousands of acres of timber in Virginia and in Louisiana, and to concentrate logging in Florida as the largest landowner and employer. They were pioneers in the use of bandsaws, carriage feeds, narrow-gage railroads, and with the use of asphalt. Initially aggressive as they cut cypress and pine trees in five states, the Cummer family became environmentalists by donating hundreds of acres of conversation land along Florida’s historic Suwannee River and creating the Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge.

 

About the Author

Douglas K. Sanders is a history writer for The Laker Lutz News and is President of the Pasco County Historical Society. He also maintains a local blog that reaches 11,000 readers on the local history of Pasco County, Florida. His book is original historical research on the Cummer family logging operations in five states and Ontario, Canada. It is based on newspaper articles, photographs from historical societies, and congressional testimony. This book is also timely with the year 2022 being the 200th anniversary of the founding of Jacksonville, Florida—a city where the Cummer’s were leaders in business and philanthropy, and the 100th anniversary of the Cummer operations established in Lacoochee, Florida.

Dorrance Publishing Company

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