George Cummins (United Irishmen)
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George Cummins (1768/1770 – 1830), also spelt George Cummings, was a Scotch-Irish American, active in Ireland in the revolutionary Society of United Irishmen and following his return to the United States after the Irish Rebellion of 1798, in the politics of the Democratic-Republican Party.
Cummins was born in North Carolina in either 1768 or 1770 to a wealthy Scotch-Irish American landowning family who had emigrated to America in the early 1700s. With ties across the Atlantic, his family owned lands in Ireland as well as America. When he was about 22 years old, he inherited land in County Down, Ireland, and moved there permanently. As an aspiring apothecary, he attended medical college in Edinburgh & studied to become a doctor. After graduating he removed to Kildare to practice his apothecary trade.[1]
The United Irishmen
Inspired by American independence and by Thomas Paine's defence of the French Revolution, The Rights of Man, the Society of United Irishmen was founded in Belfast and Dublin in 1791 by liberal Presbyterians ("Dissenters") and Anglicans ("Protestants") committed to work with Ireland's Catholic majority to secure a representative parliament in Dublin. Founding members included members included Wolfe Tone, Samuel Neilson and William Drennan.
In the mid-1790s Lord Edward Fitzgerald resettled close to Kildare town. Fitzgerald, a veteran of the American Revolutionary War, was not yet a member of the United men, but his home quickly became a hotbed of local radical opinion. His sister Lucy wrote that Cummins, as well as national organisers like Fitzgerald’s close friend Arthur O’Connor, became regular visitors. When the government, at war with the new French Republic, refused further reform, Fitzgerald and the United leadership began organising for an insurrection. In spring 1798 Lord Edward, by then the Society's Secretary was on the run and nominated Cummins to be his replacement while he was in hiding.[2]