James Cuming of Sluie

For family tree see Cuming on Ancestry (subscription required)

James Cuming of Sluie was a descendant of the Cumings of Relugas and so related, but only distantly, to the Cumings of Craigmiln. In 1771 he is recorded as owning the lands of Presley and Sluie in the parish of Edinkillie, Moray [NAS E106/14/2/5]. In June 1793 these lands were advertised as for sale at a public roup (auction) in Edinburgh [Caledonian Mercury - Saturday 25 May 1793]. The situation was described as ' extremely beauriful and romantic, commanding an extensive view of the forest of Darnway and the windings of the river; and few places can equal it as a retreat for enjoying the pi.pleasures of Fowling and Fishing.'

James Cuming was active in Demerara from some time in the 1790s and died there on 21 January 1801 [Caledonian Mercury - Saturday 18 April 1801]. His executors were Lachlan Cuming and Thomas Mewburn and in his will he left £1000 to a James Cuming, descrbed in 1816 as a 'free coloured man'. [See NAG AZ.7.5 Register on a variety of legal actions.] In 1801 Thomas Mewburn, on behalf of the late James Cuming, had beganthe process of manumitting (freeing) an enslaved woman called Belinda and her 'mulatto' child James - presumably the son of James Cuming [National Archives of Guyana AB.3.66 January 1801 - December 1802].

In the Rose of Montcoffer Papers [NRS] in a letter from William Rose to John Campbell, Senior Co., Glasgow, in 1790 (or 1796) is the following:—'By the time this reaches you William Cramond, overseer, and Alexander Brander, carpenter, both from Elgin. will be at Glasgow to go out to Barbadoes. from thence to Demerara, in the service of James Cuming.'