Genealogy Thomas » John Harleston (1739-1793)

Personal data John Harleston 

• Alternative name: Col John Harleston
• He was born on January 12, 1739 in Brunswick, New Hanover, North Carolina.Source 3
• Alternative: He was born in the year 1738 in Brunswick, New Hanover, North Carolina.Source 1
• He died on September 12, 1793 in Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina, he was 54 years old.

  Attention: Died 9 months (September 12, 1793) prior to the birth (December 25, 1794) of child (Edward Harleston) .

• Alternative: He died on September 14, 1793 in Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina, he was 54 years old.Source 1
• He is buried September 1793 in Richmond Plantation, North Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina.Source 1

  Attention: Had already been buried (??-09-1793) 9 months before the birth (December 25, 1794) of child (Edward Harleston).

• A child of Nicholas Harleston and Sarah Child

Household of John Harleston

He is married to Elizabeth Faucheraud.

They got married on April 17, 1766 at South Carolina, he was 27 years old.Sources 2, 3

Child(ren):

1. Sarah Harleston  1771-1809 
2. Jane Smith Harleston  1773-1835 
3. William Harleston  1777-1816
4. Elizabeth Harleston  1778-1837 
5. Edward Harleston  1794-1841 

Notes about John Harleston

John Harleston II was a Colonel during the Revolutionary War and was taken prisoner at the fall of Charles Town.
In the mid 1760s, Colonel John Harleston purchased Richmond Plantation. It is said that Colonel Harleston was almost unable to buy the land because he was thrown from his horse while crossing a bridge, and his money, bills of credit from the Province, was soaked in the river. He attempted to dry the money on the side of the road, but a gust of wind blew it back into the water. He jumped in to retrieve the bills and rode off to Richmond, arriving just before the purchase deadline.
Harleston soon added Villa, Bossis, and Rice Hope Plantations, as well as land and a home on the Charleston peninsula, to his land holdings. Richmond Plantation, however, was his country seat. From there, he represented the parish of Saint John’s Berkeley in the Twenty-Eighth Royal Assembly (1768) before the Revolution and the Third General Assembly (1779-1780) after the war.
Richmond’s land was used primarily for rice production, but its other resources helped to increase its prosperity. Clay was used to produce bricks, livestock and other crops were grown and sold, and lumber was harvested from the wooded areas of land. On a productive rice plantation such as Richmond, slaves would have made up the majority of the residents. When Harleston died in 1795, an inventory was taken of his property, indicating that 138 slaves lived and worked at Richmond Plantation.
The plantation was passed down to Colonel Harleston’s descendants until after the Civil War when it was sold to another rice planter. This was common practice at this time; many families in the area were forced to sell land owned for generations to cover debts or taxes, or they were simply offered a price too good to refuse. Richmond was sold again in 1896 and by the turn of the century, the white plantation house built by Colonel Harleston had been destroyed by a fire.
Colonel Harleston and some of his descendants were buried at Richmond Plantation in a walled cemetery. The first grave was that of Colonel Harleston, in 1793. The final burial took place in 1851.
The rice fields, though no longer producing rice, are clearly defined by the landscape along the riverfront. Two cypress rice trunks, constructed in 1859, are still visible above the water line. The gates of these trunks were donated in 1989: one to the Charleston Museum, the second to the State Museum in Columbia.
RIN: MH:N199

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Timeline John Harleston

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