Charles Pinckney (South Carolina chief justice)

For other people of the same name, see Charles Pinckney (disambiguation).

Charles Pinckney (died October 29, 1758) was a noted South Carolina politician and colonial agent. He was also the father of two candidates for Vice-President and President. For four presidential elections in a row, from 1796 to 1808, one of his sons would receive votes in the Electoral College.

Pinckney was long prominent in colonial affairs, serving as attorney general of the Province of South Carolina in 1733, speaker of the assembly in 1736, 1738 and 1740, chief justice of the province in 1752–1753, and agent for South Carolina in England in 1753–1758.

Pinckney married Eliza Lucas as his second wife in 1744. Three of their children lived to adulthood: Charles Cotesworth, a signer of the U.S. Constitution and the Federalist candidate for President in 1804 and 1808 and Vice-President in 1800; Harriott, who married Daniel Horry; and Thomas, who negotiated Pinckney's Treaty with Spain in 1795 and was the Federalist candidate for Vice-President in 1796. Charles Pinckney was the uncle of Colonel Charles Pinckney (1731–1784) and the great-uncle of Governor Charles Pinckney (1757–1824).

This has been adapted from a 1911 encyclopedia.