George Washington slept here: First president visited Augusta in 1791

• Washington’s visit in May 1791 was part of his Southern Tour and included parades and celebrations.
• He was greeted by local dignitaries and noted the town was well-laid-out in his personal diary.
• A long-standing rumor about Washington burying his greyhound in Augusta was later traced to an April Fool’s Day article.

George Washington slept here.

At least 17 current or former U.S. presidents have visited Augusta over its long history, beginning with the nation’s first chief executive.

Washington’s Southern Tour from March to June 1791 was punctuated by parades, speeches, and other celebrations in which residents at each stop displayed the utmost hospitality.

And Washington recorded it all – some of it, anyway – in his personal diary.

On May 18, 1791, Washington’s entourage, continuing from Savannah to Augusta, ate breakfast at an inn on the banks of McBean Creek, “15 miles from Waynesborough,” owned by Revolutionary War veteran James Fulcher.

Four miles from Augusta, Georgia’s capital at the time, Washington was greeted by a delegation of dignitaries led by Gov. Edward Telfair and George Walton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

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Washington “was escorted into the Town, and received under a discharge of Artillery,” he wrote. A meal and a tea followed at Telfair’s Grove plantation, “with many well dressed Ladies.”

He also wrote about “between 60 and 70 well dressed ladies” at an assembly at the Academy of Richmond County on May 19. On May 20, he was given a tour of ruined British battlements from the Patriots’ recapture of Augusta in 1781.

“The town of Augusta is well laid out with wide and spacious Streets,” Washington wrote in his May 20 diary entry. “It stands on a large area of a perfect plain but it is not yet thickly built tho’ surprisingly so for the time.”

In the decades after Washington’s visit, a rumor persisted that while he was in Augusta, the president buried one of his favorite greyhounds, supposedly named Cornwallis after the defeated British general.

“At some time during those three days, President Washington had the sad duty of burying his favorite greyhound,” longtime Augusta historian Edward Cashin wrote in his 1980 book “The Story of Augusta.”

Longtime Augusta Chronicle columnist pointed out years later that the 1892 newspaper article supposedly documenting the burial was dated April 1 – April Fool’s Day.