Prior to his death in 1988, William Patterson Cumming was recognized as one of the world's leading authorities in early American cartography. Cumming graduated from Davidson College in 1921 and received his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Princeton University. He taught briefly at Williams College in Massachusetts before returning to his alma mater as an English professor in 1927. He remained at Davidson until his retirement in 1968.

Cumming's initial interest in cartography began in 1931 with the purchase of John Speed's 1676 map of Carolina. His interest in this map led him to research and publish The Southeast in Early Maps (University of North Carolina Press), a landmark book which established the importance of early maps in the study of pre-Revolutionary North American history. After his retirement, Cumming published the Discovery of North America (1971), The Exploration of North America (1974), and The Fate of a Nation: The American Revolution Through Contemporary Eyes (1976).

The collection consists of early maps, photographs, photostatic copies of maps, slides, books, and offprints by Dr. Cumming and other cartographers. There also is a voluminous amount of unpublished correspondence on cartographical subjects, as well as Cumming's personal lecture notes.