John Faucheraud Grimké

Background

John Faucheraud Grimké was born on December 16, 1752, the son of John Paul and Mary Faucheraud Grimke of Charleston, South Carolina, and was of German and French descent.

Education

He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and studied law in the Middle Temple.

Career

With twenty-nine other Americans, John petitioned the Lords against the Boston Port Bill.

He returned to the colonies in September 1775 and a year later, on September 16, 1776, he was commissioned captain in the South Carolina Continental artillery, rising to lieutenant-colonel. He was deputy adjutantgeneral for South Carolina and Georgia until made prisoner at the surrender of Charleston, May 12, 1780.

After being tried for alleged violation of his parole in March 1781, he considered his parole void and rejoined the Continental Army, remaining until the end of the war.

Grimke sat in the state House of Representatives five years, serving as speaker, 1785-86. At the same time he held a judgeship, dating from 1783, and in 1799 he became senior associate, virtually chief justice.

In 1788 he was intendant of Charleston and a member of the convention which ratified the federal Constitution, voting himself for the Constitution. The following year he was made a presidential elector.

In 1785 he and Judges Pendleton and Burke were elected a commission “to effect a revisal, digest, and publication of the laws. ” Their report (1789) was not adopted, but certain recommendations were later passed. This work apparently led Grimke to publish his Public Laws of the State of South Carolina (1790 and later editions), “invaluable when published, ” and superseded only when Thomas Cooper published his Statutes at Large of South Carolina in 1836, a work partly based on Grimke’s. Cooper, however, was somewhat critical of his omissions. Grimke also published The South Carolina Justice of Peace (1788), and The Duty of Executors and Administrators (1797).

He died at Long Branch, New Jersey.

Achievements

• Grimké was a prominent jurist. He took an active interest in the improvement of internal navigation, lent his support to three companies, and served as president of the Catawba River Company. He did his best work as a legal compiler in the period of legal reform following the Revolution.

Works

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• book

  • The Public Laws Of The State Of South-Carolina.

    (Title: The Public Laws Of The State Of South-Carolina. A...)

Politics

Grinke contended against legal delays, opposed inheritance by primogeniture, and had a higher opinion of feminine mentality than most men of his day.

Personality

Grimke has been called “a stern, unbending judge. ” His most important decisions, those regarding seizures by partisan troops during the Revolution, were relatively conclusive. In appeals sittings he occasionally delivered the opinion of the court. Sometimes arbitrary, he was not popular in his up-country circuit, and in 1811 a committee reported impeachment charges against him, but they failed of the requisite two-thirds vote of the House.

Connections

On October 12, 1784, he married Mary Smith of Charleston. They had fourteen children of whom three were Thomas Smith, Sarah Moore and Angelina Emily.

Father:

John Paul Grimke

Mother:

Mary Faucheraud Grimke

Spouse:

Mary Smith