I had been researching my family tree for about two years when I met Virginia Kendell Preston at the Washington Memorial Library in Macon, Georgia. She had just published her family's history under the title Lumsden Family and Related Lines and the information in it was, by far, more than I could have hoped. She had traced not only numerous lines forward from Thomas and Virginia Lumsden, but, included a brief history on my Leonard line. In fact, my grandfather was listed in the book! But, more importantly, it had information on Thomas Reid Lumsden, my great-great-grandfather's brother-in-law.
Thomas Reid Lumsden was born in Putnam County, Georgia in 1821, the son of John Greer Lumsden. John had been born in Virginia and moved to Georgia as a child following the Revolution. Already a large landowner in Hancock, Putnam, and Irwin counties by 1830, John bought half ownership in a gold mine on Duke's Creek in Habersham county in the Nacoochee Valley and promptly moved his family there. (The mine stayed in the family's hands and proved quite profitable. As late as 1880, the Lumsden-Richardson Mine on Duke's Creek was making an average of $40-45 per day working only two miners for half a day. It was reported that they also pulled diamonds, sapphires and other rare stones out of the mine.)
Thomas was nine when the family moved to the Nacoochee Valley and it was here that he met and married Sophronia Antionette Richardson, the daughter of John L. Richardson, a circuit-riding Methodist minister. The marriage lasted five years, produced two sons, and ended with Sophronia's death in 1850.
It was on a trip to Talbot county, Georgia in July 1853 that Thomas met and married his second wife, Virginia Pierce Leonard, the daughter of Roderick Leonard, a former state representative from Morgan county, Georgia who had settled in Talbot county in the mid 1830's. For a short time, the newlyweds lived at Thomas' Floyd county plantation, located on the Etowah River five miles above the city of Rome, part of his parents' estate. In 1854, Thomas moved to the Red Bone district of Talbot county, building a home on present day Po-Biddy Road. The home stands today and is still in the Lumsden family.
Thomas served in the Confederacy as a Private and represented Talbot county in the state House of Representatives from 1858-60, but it is his other business venture which proves most elusive.
An article which appeared in the Macon Telegraph on December 29, 1897, describes it best:
"... Mr. Lumsden is famous in his section of Georgia for his 'long-life' remedies. He is not a doctor or a patent medicine man, but he is just a plain student of botany, and has discovered a decoction of herbs and roots which has made him famous locally for his wonderful cures of rheumatism, cancers and other similar troubles, most of which he attributes indirectly to indigestion. He tries to be a benefactor of suffering humanity and has never charged for his medicines. He sets out his jugs of medicine along with his 'Simmon Beer', and all who suffer got to his fountain of youth and are cured."
Only two of the Lumden Long-Life elixir bottles are known to exist, although its rarity may be due to its anonymity rather than its scarcity. Both have been handed down as family heirlooms, one following the laws of primogeniture to its present owner somewhere in the Atlanta area. The second belonging to the owner of the Lumsden Home place 1890 Bed and Breakfast in Sautee, Georgia, five miles outside of Helen. The Lumsden Home place is the renovated 1890 home of Jesse Richardson Lumsden, son of Thomas R. Lumsden by his first wife, and owner-operator of the Lumsden-Richardson Mine that was located nearby.
Standing about six inches tall, it presents a rectangular-shaped footprint approximately one inch by three inches. The bottle is molded glass, with a slightly indented face and back and was stoppered by a one-half inch diameter cork. On the reverse is embossed three letter "L's" stacked vertically, each letter being approximately one inch in height and in a medium weight block serifed type similar to the present day Lubilin. The face was covered by a paper label with wings that folded around the sides. The top of the label is arched in a quarter circle.
The label proclaims the healing effect of herbal remedy contained within: Lumsden's Long-Life, contains 16 3/4 % alcohol. Made exclusively of Roots, Herbs, Barks secured from the Forests and Swamps of Georgia. This old remedy was discovered over a quarter century ago by Col. T. R. Lumsden, of Talbot County, now in his eighty-ninth year as a remedy for Catarrh, Rheumatism, and Blood Diseases. It hasn't a superior.
The left wing reads: This remedy is Purely Vegetable, the medicinal properties of the Roots, Herbs, and Barks used in its composition being extracted in a highly concentrated form.
The right wing reads: An alternate for the renovation of the blood, and for the restoration of tone and strength to the system debilitated by disease.
Although the patent was filed with the Office of the Secretary of State for the State of Georgia in 1910 and a trademark issued at that time, it is evident that Thomas was producing and distributing his concoction for decades prior. The label refers to the fact that Mr. Lumsden was in his 89th year. Obviously, this particular label was printed in 1910, but the product itself was first developed in 1885. Mike Crittenden, owner of the second of the two known bottles and present owner of the Lumsden Home place says that Thomas Lumsden would drive a horse-drawn cart throughout the county, selling his elixir to the ailing Talbot countians (or perhaps giving it away, if the 1897 Macon Telegraph article is to be believed.)
