I’ve mentioned (more than a few times) that I’m in the middle of doing research for a class I’m teaching for Osher in the Spring – “Forgotten Founders: The Pinckney Family of South Carolina.” I proposed this class after I taught a class a couple of years ago on the 1790s – an often overlooked but critical period in American history. During this class, I kept stumbling over the Pinckney family, so I decided they deserved deeper investigation. “Forgotten Founders” was born.
One of my greatest challenges was figuring out who this family was. There were a lot of them, and many of them were named “Charles” or “Thomas.” Because they were truly not familiar to me, I kept getting them confused. A few days ago, I decided I needed to sketch out a rough family tree for this family; it took only a few minutes of my pencil-and-paper notes to realize that I could use Ancestry – the platform where I do my genealogy research – to investigate this family as well. So I began to build a Pinckney family tree on Ancestry.
For those of you not familiar with Ancestry, an account holder can build lots of different trees. Some people build separate trees for their maternal and paternal lines. Some make a tree for their spouses’ family in addition to the tree for their own family. I have built a number of trees – a Direct Ancestor tree for myself, a Descendants’ Tree (to identify all the descendants of my 3rd great-grandparents), a Franklin family tree (for the class I taught last year on Benjamin Franklin), and a few more. I realized there was no better way to figure out the Pinckney family than through building out a family tree for them. So I did. I already knew how to do that so it didn’t take much time.
This tree has helped me enormously as I weave my way through this family’s story. You don’t have to be able to read the names in the tiny boxes to understand this tree; you can follow the color coding instead. The six yellow boxes indicate men named Thomas Pinckney; the five red boxes show you all the men named Charles Pinckney; and the blue box shows you the one (but important) William Pinckney.
Thomas Pinckney (at the top of the chart) was the first Pinckney to come to South Carolina; he came from the West Indies in 1692. He had three sons – Thomas (1696-1733), William (1703-1766), and Charles (1699-1758). Thomas 1696 didn’t have any children. However, William had 14 children (I think) and Charles had four. This meant there were lots of people named Pinckney in South Carolina during the 18th century.
Following the family tree above, you can see that William 1703 (blue square) had a son named Charles (red) and a son named Thomas (yellow). Only his son Charles had children – but he managed to produce both a Charles (red) and a Thomas (yellow).
Moving over to the right on this tree, you can see that William’s brother Charles 1699 (red) had a Thomas (yellow) but not a Charles. However, that Thomas had both a Charles (red) and a Thomas (yellow).
The genealogy resources I have come to know and understand over the past decade are invaluable for other historical research as well. Websites that focus on family history usually place their information in the context of local, regional, and national history.
So why should we care about this family? Once I had the family relationships fairly well sorted out (using hints and documents from Ancestry and other sites to build the family stories), I was able to place some of these men in their historical context. This is the chart I made next.
Not all of the men named Charles and Thomas were famous; but the ones who made a name for themselves did so in dramatic fashion. As you can see from this chart, only one Thomas Pinckney became well known; however, four men named Charles Pinckney achieved renown. The most interesting of these men are on the three bottom rows – Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Thomas Pinckney, and Charles Pinckney. They were everywhere in the second half of the 18th century.
One note to perhaps pique your interest — a Pinckney was involved in the Treaty of San Lorenzo in 1895 (also called the Pinckney Treaty), in the XYZ Affair with France in 1797-1798, and in the negotiations for the Louisiana Purchase.
I’m not going to fill in all the details about their lives in this essay – I have a lot more reading and thinking to do. But if you’re interested in these individuals, you can get a quick overview of their lives by reading the articles about them on Wikipedia.
I don’t know how you find the time to do all you do AND write interesting columns almost daily!
Very interesting. Thanks!