Person:John Rutledge (9)

Information on John Rutledge

From "Cavan, Galway", by Rev. Benjamin B. Smith:

JOHN AND EDWARD RUTLEDGE OF SOUTH CAROLINA, A book by Professor James Haw, whetted the appetites of my wife and myself for a trip to Ireland. Dr. John Rutledge, my great-great-great-great-great grandfather, was a native of Ireland. He was the father of two South Carolina governors, John Rutledge, a signer of the U.S. Constitution, and his younger brother, Edward Rutledge, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The elder John Rutledge had followed his older brother, Andrew Rutledge, from Ireland to South Carolina. Andrew, an attorney, arrived around 1730, and John, a physician, a few years later. In South Carolina, they married well: Andrew married Sarah Boone, the daughter of Capt. John Boone of Boone Hall Plantation, the widow of planter Hugh Hext. Dr. John married Andrew's fourteen-year-old stepdaughter, Sarah Boone Hext. Both marriages gave the young Rutledges considerable property.

The first sentence in Dr. Haw's book states "Little is known of John and Edward Rutledges European ancestry." Dr. Haw wrote "The are said" to have owned land in County Cavan, "in Ballymagied, near Baronlog," Ireland. His footnotes cite "Notes from Anna Wells Rutledge, Aug. 4, 1977" in the Rutledge File, South Carolina Historical Society. That gave us a target. Go to Ireland and find information about the Irish background of the Rutledge family. [Source: http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~donkelly/RUTLEDGE/Rutstates/ireland.htm]