| HIST |
John was brought to South Carolina by his mother and stepfather, Jasper Sutton, when he was thirteen years old. He entered the Kershaw stores as apprentice, but was a partner by the time he was 23. At the time of the Revolution his landed estates were very large, and he was a most influential man. He was a delegate to the first Provincial Congress of South Carolina, which met in Charleston, 11 Jan, 1775 and again on 1 June. He was later elected to the Committee of Continental Association. He was appointed “Justice of the Quorum” for Orangeburg District in 1775, and Justice of the Peace in April 1776. When the war began, he was attached to the 3d South Carolina Regiment, commanded by Colonel William Thomson, as Paymaster with the rank of Captain. After the battle of Purrysburg he resigned, having an attack of rheumatism which confined him to bed for six months. As soon as he recovered, he obtained a command in the militia, and served during the Georgia campaign; later, at the evacuation of Charleston, 1780, he was taken prisoner and paroled to his plantation at Knight’s Hill. Colonel John Chesnut, among others, refused to take up arms against their countrymen, and were thrown into prison and chained to the floor. John bore to his grave the marks of these irons about his ankles. After the Revolution he took a prominent part in the politics of the State. In 1788 he was a member of the Convention to frame the Constitution; in 1793 and again in 1796 he was elected to the State Senate; and he was among the first selection of Trustees for the South Carolina College then founded. He was an intimate friend of General Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, of Governor John Rutledge and Colonel Wade Hampton; and General Washington, in his visit to the South, in 1791, was entertained by him in Camden. His portrait, by Gilbert Stuart, is now in the possession of his great-great-grandson, David Rogerson Williams, 3d. He became a very rich man and lived in great state in his different houses. One part of his social life which pleased the younger part of the community was a weekly ball and supper. He often travelled with coach and four to Charleston or Columbia in the winter; and rearely missed a visit to Virginia and Philadephia or New York in the summer. He was well educated; and had a fine library. On 1 April 1813, he died, and was buried beside his wife in the family buring ground at Knight’s Hill. [1] |
1743 - 1813 (69 years)
