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1742 - 1779 (37 years)| Name | William Henry DRAYTON [4, 5, 6] | |
| Prefix | Chief Justice | |
| Suffix | Sr. | |
| Birth | 1742 | Drayton Hall, near Charleston, South Carolina  |
| Gender | Male | |
| HIST | He will be inducted into South Carolina’s Hall of Fame next year (2006). He contributed to the American Revolution from 1765, and was “the first prominent politician from the lower Southern colonies to start what would openly begin the American Revolution,” when he called for the secession from Great Britain in 1774. He was later appointed the Supreme Court Justice for the Southern colonies by the Continental Congress and sat on several key select committees. He wrote, “In his papers one would find that many of the liberties we enjoy today as Americans were founded, such as the separation of the diferent branches of government and other freedoms we take for granted. He was co-author of the Bill of Rights and Articles of Confederation.” William Henry Drayton From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Other notable men have similar names, see: William Drayton (disambiguation). William Henry Drayton William Henry Drayton (September 1742 – September 3, 1779) was an American planter and lawyer from Charleston, South Carolina. He served as a delegate for South Carolina to the Continental Congress in 1778 and 1779. William Henry was born at his father's plantation, Drayton Hall, on the bank of the Ashley River near Charleston. His father, John Drayton had just completed construction of this massive main house on the rice plantation. His mother was Charlotta Bull Drayton, the daughter of the colony's Governor William Bull. This would remain William's home throughout his life. In 1750 he sent to England for his education. He first studied at Westminster School where he also met young Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. Then he went on to Balliol College, Oxford before returning home in 1764. He read law and was admitted to the bar in South Carolina. Drayton at first opposed the growing sense of colonial unity and resistance after the Stamp Act Congress, but reversed his position as the Revolution grew nearer. He first wrote a series of published letters opposing the American actions. When these were published in England, he was made a member of the Colonial Council in 1772. Governor Bull appointed him to the Colony's Court in 1774. But later that year he wrote a pamphlet, the American Claim of Rights, that supported the call for a Continental Congress. This got him removed from all government positions which completed his conversion to the Rebel cause. He became a member of South Carolina's Committee of Safety in 1775, as well as the provisional Congress that functioned as the colony's rebel government. In 1776 he and Arthur Middleton designed the Great Seal of South Carolina. When they began operating under an interim constitution in 1776 he returned to his seat on the council, serving as Chief Justice of state's Supreme Court. When the South Carolina General Assembly unanimously voted for union with Georgia in 1776, Drayton became the chief champion of the proposal. The union was rejected by a Georgia convention on January 23, 1777, but Drayton continued to campaign in Georgia for union until Governor John A. Treutlen issued a reward for his arrest. In 1778, Carolina sent Drayton as a delegate to the Continental Congress where he gave strong support to the military. But he was no friend to the Natives. “Cut up every Indian Cornfield and burn every Indian town,” proclaimed Congressman William Henry Drayton of South Carolina, so that their “nation be extirpated and the lands become the property of the public.” He died while in office at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania of typhus; first buried in Philadelphia's Christ Church Burial Ground.[1] in 1979 his remains were reburied at his South Carolina Plantation.[2] His home, "Drayton Hall", now lies within the expanded city of Charleston. It is operated as a museum and is open to the public (an admission fee is charged). • Brother of Charles Drayton-husband of Hester-daughter of Henry Middleton • Cousin of Congressman William Drayton. THIS MONTH IN S.C. HISTORY S.C. attempts to annex Georgia in January 1777 Posted Wednesday, January 10, 2018 6:00 am From the Collections of the South Carolina Historical Society William Henry Drayton FROM THE S.C. HISTORICAL SOCIETY On Jan. 23, 1777, William Henry Drayton addressed the Georgia Convention in Savannah proposing that South Carolina annex the state of Georgia. In the midst of the American Revolution, the offer was spurred by economic interests as well as concerns that Georgia's citizens did not support the Patriot cause. Drayton spoke to the convention for over an hour. He echoed the South Carolina General Assembly's belief that the union would promote Georgia's "strength, wealth and dignity, and secure their liberty." Afterward, Drayton handed out copies of his speech, and the delegates announced that they would consider his proposal the following day. A lawyer, planter and politician, Drayton published a pamphlet titled the American Claim of Rights in 1774, which supported home rule. He became a member of the Committee of Safety in 1775 and along with Arthur Middleton designed South Carolina's state seal in 1776. That same year, he became Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court. In November 1776, Drayton rallied support for the American cause in North Carolina where he raised two battalions. Encouraged by this success, the South Carolina Assembly decided that he should try his luck in Georgia, going so far as to suggest that, because Georgia had a smaller population, it would benefit from being annexed to its eastern neighbor. When the Georgia Convention met on Jan. 24 to consider Drayton's proposal, he was not allowed to participate in the discussion. His biographer, Keith Krawczynski, notes that "Drayton must have writhed as he could only sit by and take notes on what he considered were 'gross misrepresentations' of his proposal." The Georgians politely rejected the offer, and Drayton left for home. The following spring, he renewed his campaign and went directly to the people of Georgia with petitions and appeals. In the summer of 1777, Drayton returned to Georgia but avoided Savannah where locals threatened to tar and feather him. In July, Georgia's Gov. John Treutlan issued a proclamation offering a reward of 100 pounds for the capture of Drayton and any person "unlawfully endeavoring to poison the minds of the good People of this State against the government." Drayton responded with a treatise stating that the governor's petition consisted of "nonsense and falsehoods." However, Treutlan's proclamation was enough to cause Drayton's prompt return home and put an end to South Carolina's effort to annex Georgia. THIS MONTH IN S.C. HISTORY April 21, 1775: The Rebellion of South Carolina William Henry Drayton was head of the Secret Committee that seized British gunpowder and weapons on April 21, 1775. Posted Tuesday, April 11, 2023 6:00 am BY THE S.C. HISTORICAL SOCIETY After Britain passed the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, in 1774, dissatisfaction rose among the American colonists. The day after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, South Carolinians moved to arm themselves. Charles Pinckney, the president of the Provincial Congress, appointed a Secret Committee to be headed by William Henry Drayton. The committee was instructed to seize the British government's weapons and gunpowder. On the night of Friday, April 21, Drayton's committee members led raids on three separate targets. Charleston's main armory was located near the corner of what is now Broad and Meeting streets, under the current Federal Post Office. Around 11 p.m., William Henry Drayton met Charles Pinckney, Henry Laurens, Thomas Lynch, Benjamin Huger, William Bull and John Drayton near the building. According to a memoir by Joseph Johnson, they were joined by a group of local mechanics. The men removed approximately 800 muskets, 200 cutlasses and the building's entire inventory of cartridge boxes. The weapons and munitions were dispersed and hidden in several locations. Two other powder magazines were outside the town limits, one on the "Neck" of the peninsula and the other on Molasses Creek, or Hobcaw, in what is now Mount Pleasant. According to Charleston historian Nic Butler, at the same time that the raid on the central armory was occurring, two groups took off in rowboats from the Charleston waterfront. He speculates that they departed from Gadsden's wharf with one boat headed to Shipyard Creek on the Neck while the other took Wando River toward Molasses Creek. By most accounts, the magazine on the Neck was empty when the burglars arrived, but the other contingent seized all the powder from the Hobcaw magazine and delivered it to Gadsden's wharf as expected. The next morning, Lt. Gov. William Bull was informed of the raids and called for an investigation. The ordnance storekeeper described the items that had been stolen from the central armory and reported that there was nothing to indicate forced entry of the facility. The deputy powder receiver reported that the public powder magazine near Hobcaw was forced open and all the powder had been removed. If anyone witnessed the burglaries, they did not step forward, even when Bull offered a reward of Ј100 sterling. Bull referred the matter to the investigation of the Commons House, which responded by stating that it was unable "to obtain any certain intelligence relative to the removal of the public arms, and gun-powder," but suggested that "some inhabitants of this colony, may have been induced to take so extraordinary and uncommon a step, in consequence of the alarming accounts from Great Britain." According to Butler, those accounts divulged Britain's intentions to use its military to extinguish any resistance in the colonies. These nighttime raids demonstrated that South Carolinians were ready to act. [1, 2, 3, 7, 8] | |
| MILI | instrumental in Revolutionary War activities in South Carolina [5] | |
| Occupation | member of the Continental Congress (1778-79) and helped write the Articles of Confederation [5, 7] | |
| _UID | 06BA6E73B9AE4F3ABCAA91A2EB258D571E09 | |
| Death | 3 Sep 1779 | Philadelphia [9] |
| Burial | Christ Church Cemetery [10] |
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| Person ID | I80747 | Singleton and Related Families |
| Last Modified | 26 Apr 2023 | |
| Father | John DRAYTON, Jr. of Drayton Hall, b. 1713? d. 1779 | |
| Mother | Charlotte/a BULL d. 30 Dec 1743 | |
| Marriage | 14 Nov 1742 [11] | |
| _UID | 6CAEF806C2C245E89CA8DFA592BA01D8B653 | |
| _UID | 6CAEF806C2C245E89CA8DFA592BA01D8B653 | |
| Family ID | F56124 | Group Sheet | Family Chart |
| Family | Dorothy GOLIGHTLY | |||||||||
| _UID | 8D9FCC7F91E74DA190590C5ED32C84CF82D4 | |||||||||
| _UID | 8D9FCC7F91E74DA190590C5ED32C84CF82D4 | |||||||||
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| Family ID | F56127 | Group Sheet | Family Chart | ||||||||
| Last Modified | 23 Mar 2026 | |||||||||
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