However, death notices of John which appeared in the Alexandria [Virginia] Advertiser and Commercial Intelligencer and the Charleston Times, both noting his death at his Keowee Heights home in Pendleton District, South Carolina, on 26 October 1802, state that John was aged 53 when he died in 1802.[2] This would place his birth in 1749.[3] As has been previously noted, John’s parents were in Augusta (today Wythe) County, Virginia, from October 1745 until 1755, when they moved to South Carolina after Braddock’s defeat in July 1755. John E. Colhoun would have been born in Augusta County, Virginia, then.

Biographies usually state that John was born in Staunton, Virginia, the county seat of Augusta County.[4] Reed Creek in what’s now Wythe County, where John’s parents settled by October 1745, is over 150 miles from Staunton. I think it’s very likely that John E. Colhoun was born at his family’s farm on Reed Creek near Wytheville and not in Staunton.

As a previous posting notes, John’s father Ezekiel Calhoun died in 1761 or 1762, having made a will on 3 September 1759 naming his children including his son John.[5] Ezekiel’s will left his lands on Reed Creek in Augusta County, Virginia, and on the Long Cane in Granville (later Abbeville) County, South Carolina, to his sons John, Patrick, and Ezekiel, to be divided equally among them.

As the posting linked in the preceding paragraph shows, on 5 September 1771, John E. Colhoun sold his father Ezekiel’s 500-acre tract on Reed Creek in what was now Botetourt County to his cousin Robert Montgomery.[6] The deed notes that John Colhoun was living in Granville County, South Carolina, at the time he sold this land.

As the previously linked posting also states, on 12 March 1771, John E. Colhoun sold William Hutton his father Ezekiel’s tract of 150 acres in Granville County, South Carolina, called Rock Spring.[7] John would likely have been living with his mother Jean and her second husband Robert Norris in the Long Cane settlement when he made these land sales as a young unmarried man just coming of age.

Schooling at Princeton

Soon after he sold these two tracts of his father’s land, John E. Colhoun then left South Carolina to go to the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) for schooling, graduating from that school in 1774.[8] While he was at Princeton, John subscribed to the publication of the Memoirs of the Life of the Reverend George Whitefield, a book published in New York in May 1774; we know of this fact because the list of subscribers to the book published in the front of the book includes the name “John E. Colhoun,” Student, Nassau-Hall.[9] On the multiple connections of members of the Calhoun kinship network to Princeton, a school founded by New Light Presbyterians to train Presbyterian ministers which was “the educational and religious capital of Scottish-Irish America,” see this previous posting.[10]

Revolutionary Service in Charleston and as Aide-de-Camp for Andrew Pickens

Having completed his education at Princeton, John then went to Charleston, where he is found on the roll of Capt. Charles Drayton’s company of volunteer militia for service in the Revolution when this military unit was organized on 16 August 1775.[11] As John Drayton and William Henry Drayton explain, soon after the commencement of hostilities between South Carolina and the British Crown, on 14 November 1775, the Council of Safety in Charleston, which was organized in July 1775, elected local officers for the militia, including Charles Drayton (1743-1820) as a militia captain.[12] A list of the members of Captain Drayton’s militia unit at the time of its organization in 1775 is found in a collection held by South Carolina Historical Society with the title “Letters to the Council of Safety, 1775.”[13]

John had evidently gone to Charleston, where he was studying law after he left Princeton (on this point, more in a moment) with political aspirations, or he developed such aspirations after having arrived in Charleston. According to several of his biographers, he entered the South Carolina General Assembly in 1778, serving in that body until 1800.[14] James Spady states that John “remained a fixture in the S.C. House of Representatives over the next two decades, representing at various times the backcountry districts of Ninety Six and Pendleton as well as the lowcountry parish of St. Stephen’s.”[15] Spady also notes that in 1779 John became a member of the Mount Zion Society, an organization that had been formed in Charleston in January 1777, and which established a school at Winnsboro to educate the sons of prominent South Carolinians.[16]

In addition to serving in Drayton’s militia unit in Charleston during the Revolution, John E. Colhoun also served as a militia captain and aide-de-camp for his brother-in-law, General Andrew Pickens, husband of John’s sister Rebecca Calhoun.[17] John’s Audited Account papers for this Revolutionary service show him paid £143.11.5 as Andrew Pickens’ aide-de-camp for the period 1 May 1781 to 1 April 1782. This file shows John confirming his service in Charleston on 22 September 1783 and signing receipts for payment on 17 September and 1 November 1784.

John Launches a Law Practice in Charleston and Acquires Pendleton District Land

As biographers note, when John E. Colhoun went to Charleston after his time at Princeton, he did so with the intent to study law, a venture the Revolution interrupted.[18] In 1783, he was admitted to the bar and opened a law practice in Charleston.[19]

As discussed previously, on 21 May 1784, John had a survey for 640 acres on both sides of Twelve Mile River on the east side of the Keowee River in what was would soon be Pendleton District.[20] This is the tract at the juncture of Twelve Mile River and the Keowee River that would become John’s Keowee Heights upcountry plantation, which is discussed in a number of previous postings including the one linked at the start of this paragraph, which notes that John’s niece Jane Kerr and husband John Green managed the construction of John E. Colhoun’s house there and assisted with managing the Keowee Heights plantation as it got underway. Jane Kerr was a daughter of John’s sister Mary Calhoun and her husband Samuel Kerr.

As the posting linked at the head of the previous paragraph notes (and see also here), on the same day, 21 May 1784, John’s brother-in-law Andrew Pickens had a survey for 573 acres on the Keowee near John E. Colhoun’s 640-acre tract, and this land became Andrew Pickens’ Hopewell plantation, on which he built a house still standing and now on land owned by Clemson University.[21] According to Pendleton Historic Distric, it was John E. Colhoun who brought the Pickens family up into the area along the Keowee.[22]

 As a previous posting notes, on 16 June 1784, John E. Colhoun’s widowed sister Mary Kerr also had a survey for land — 350 acres — on both sides of the middle fork of Twelve Mile River in what would become Pendleton District. Mary appears to have purchased this land not to live on it, since she continued living in Abbeville County after she bought the land, but to speculate in land in western South Carolina.

John E. Colhoun’s purchase of the Keowee tract and his decision to build a house on it and operate it as a plantation suggest to me his interest in maintaining his close ties to the upcountry and his kinship network there, while he had his legal practice in Charleston. Various records show him making repeated visits to his Keowee Heights home while he lived in the lowcountry, and it would be there that John died in 1802.

At some point in the 1780s after he began his law practice, John E. Colhoun became a commissioner of confiscated estates, a position he resigned in March 1786.[23] In February 1784, he was elected a member of the South Carolina Privy Council.[24]

John Marries Floride Bonneau

On 8 October 1786, John Ewing Colhoun married Floride Bonneau, daughter of Samuel Bonneau of St. John’s Parish, who was born 8 October 1768, and was John E. Colhoun’s junior by some twenty years. A marriage announcement published by the Charleston Morning Post and Daily the following day states:[25]

Married.  Yesterday the Hon. John Ewing Colhoun, Esq; of this city, to Miss Floride Bonneau, daughter of Samuel Bonneau, Esq; of St. John’s Parish, an agreeable young lady, with every accomplishment to render the married state happy.

As Robert Meriwether notes, Floride was the daughter of a wealthy Cooper River planter.[26] The marriage brought John E. Colhoun plantations in the South Carolina lowcountry in addition to the one he had just begun developing on Twelve Mile and Keowee Rivers in Pendleton District in the upcountry. From his father Anthony Bonneau, Floride’s father Samuel Bonneau inherited, along with his brother Benjamin, 3,020 acres in the parishes of St. John’s Berkeley, St. Thomas, and St. Dennis. The inheritance included a plantation of 890 acres on the Cooper River called Bonneau’s Ferry, which eventually came into the sole possession of Samuel and was his principal residence.[27] Samuel also had a townhouse in Charleston. Bonneau’s Ferry then passed into the hands of Floride and husband John E. Colhoun when Samuel Bonneau died between 3 October 1788, when he made his will in St. John’s parish, and 12 November 1788 when the will was probated.[28]

Samuel’s will also bequeathed to John E. and Floride Colhoun the house on King Street in Charleston in which they were living when Samuel made the will. As a previous posting notes, the 1790 Charleston city directory shows John E. Colhoun’s law offices at 127 King Street. I think it’s likely that this address was also the residence of John and Floride Calhoun at this time.

John and Floride Live at Charleston and the Bonneau’s Ferry Plantation While He Has the Keowee Heights House Built in Pendleton District

The 1790 federal census shows John E. Colhoun and his family in St. Philip’s and St. Michael’s Parish in Charleston, with a household comprised of two free white males, two females, and seven enslaved persons.[29] Letters archived in the John Ewing Colhoun collection at Wilson Library of University of North Carolina Chapel Hill make clear that John and his family were living in the lowcountry in the latter part of the 1780s and early part of the 1790s, despite his attempt to open a plantation on the Keowee in Pendleton District in the same period and have a house built on it.[30] Letters dating from 1788-1792 are mostly from John’s overseers in the lowcountry, Jesse McConnico and John Christian Grininger, and speak of crops and his plantation at St. Stephens on the Santee. There are also letters to both John and wife Floride from a John Couturier about their lowcountry plantations. I find in the collection a memorandum of agreement appointing Couturier an overseer.

In a previous posting, I shared digital images of a letter written by John Green, husband of John E. Colhoun’s niece Jane Kerr, to John E. Colhoun on 6 March 1792, and I discussed this letter in detail.[31] As I noted, John Green sent this letter to John E. Colhoun from Twelve Mile River. John E. Colhoun was in Charleston at the time. As I noted above, the 640 acres that John E. Colhoun bought on the Keowee in Pendleton District in May 1784 were on both sides of Twelve Mile River at the junction of that river with the Keowee. It was on this tract that John E. Colhoun developed his Keowee Heights plantation and built his Keowee Heights house. The letter indicates that John and Jane Kerr Green were living on this tract in 1792 and managing the development of her uncle’s plantation there and the building of his Keowee Heights house, which John Green tells John E. Colhoun would perhaps be ready by 1 May 1792.

As the same posting notes, a drawing of the Keowee Heights plantation and house was published in 1847 by Martha Colhoun, daughter of John E. Colhoun’s son John Ewing Colhoun Jr.[32] The drawing, which shows the plantation house whose construction John Green oversaw sitting atop a hill overlooking the plantation, was by J.H. Richard of Wagner & McGuigan in Philadelphia, and was an illustration for sheet music Martha Colhoun published in 1847, with the title Keowee Waltzes. In a book entitled The Recollections of a Happy Childhood, Mary Esther Huger published an image of Keowee Waltzes with Richard’s drawing of the Keowee Heights plantation and house. Huger’s book cites a description of Keowee Heights written in 1825 by Caroline Olivia Laurens:

[A] beautiful seat situated on a very high hill. The dwelling house is large & a very handsome one—has two piazzas, one above & below; they extend around two sides of the house.

Lynne R. Beeson notes the following:[33]

Keowee Heights was built by John Ewing Colhoun originally as a summer home in the 1790’s. The site of the plantation was on a high hill between the Keowee and Twelve Mile Rivers.   

Beeson states that following the death of John E. Colhoun, the Keowee Heights house became the property of his son Colonel John Ewing Colhoun Jr. and,

It was during the residence of Colonel Colhoun that Keowee attained its highest period of affluence. In springtime, when the dogwoods were in full bloom, the white frame house with its stately columns, was a picture book of enchantment. It was easily the most extensive and refined plantation home in the area.

In 1854, while visiting relatives at Woodburn plantation, Clarissa Adger wrote in her diary,[34]

We also went to John E.’s place, Keowee. It is most beautiful. The house is on the summit of a high hill and the grounds are in fine order. It is said to be worth $30,000.

In another previous posting, I shared an undated sketch of the Keowee Heights plantation showing its location at the juncture of the Keowee and Twelve Mile Rivers which is archived in the John Ewing Colhoun Papers at Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

I have also shared previously a digital image of a 12 March 1792 list of John E. Colhoun’s taxable property in 1791, which is found in the John C. Calhoun family papers at Duke University’s Rubenstein library.[35] As the linked posting indicates, this document shows John in 1791 with extensive landholdings and fifty enslaved persons in various places in South Carolina including in Charleston and other lowcountry areas, as well as in Orangeburg District, in Abbeville District on the Long Cane, in Ninety-Six District, and in Pendleton District. His land there (“above the old boundary”) as listed on this tax list included 250 acres of low ground on Twelve Mile River and 60 acres of low ground (i.e., fertile river-bottom land) on the Keowee, along with 840 and 260 acres of 2nd-quality timberland on the Keowee. For a similar list of John E. Colhoun’s landholdings compiled in 1789, see this posting.

Also previously, I shared a digital image of a letter that John Green sent John E. Colhoun on 12 May 1793 from Twelve Mile River (i.e., from John E. Colhoun’s Keowee Heights plantation), while John E. Colhoun was at his Bonneau’s Ferry plantation in the lowcountry.[36] As the posting to which I’ve just pointed says, this letter indicates that John Green and wife Jane were still overseeing her uncle’s Keowee Heights plantation, apparently while setting up their own, but were making preparations to hand that work over to someone else as they began developing their own land. John Green suggests to John E. Colhoun that a Mr. Meadows would be a good manager for the upcountry plantation, and it reports notes there was hostile activity in the Creek Nation on the western frontier in Georgia, with scalping and horse-stealing.

The letter ends with John Green asking John E. Colhoun to bring his wife to the upcountry, assuring her that she need not fear and telling him please to let Mrs. Colhoun know that John Green had five guns, which he and Jane would shoulder to walk up the hill and protect Mrs. Colhoun. This is one of a number of indicators in documents relating to John E. Colhoun suggesting that his wife Floride, who was lowcountry-born and -raised, was reluctant to travel to the upcountry and spend time there.

In another previous posting, I shared a digital image and transcription of a letter that John E. Colhoun’s older sister Mary Calhoun Kerr wrote to him on 3 August 1793. The letter was primarily concerned with news Mary had received “from the accounts we have had from them in Charleston” — her son John Kerr, John E. Colhoun’s nephew, was living there by this time — that John E. Colhoun’s daughter Floride Bonneau Colhoun, then a year and seven months old, was dangerously ill. Mary states that she was afraid she might hear news that “littel flory” had died, and in that case, she wanted to offer consolation and good counsel to her brother. John E. Colhoun’s daughter Floride survived this illness, of course, and grew up to become the wife of John Caldwell Calhoun, a first cousin of her father John E. Colhoun.

I have also shared previously digital images of a letter John Green sent John E. Colhoun on 12 August 1793 from the Keowee Heights plantation while John E. Colhoun was continuing to reside with his family in the lowcountry.[37] The posting I’ve just linked provides a summary of what this letter stated. It provided news of John E. Colhoun’s upcounty plantation, and ended by once again mentioning John Green’s wife Jane, with encouragement for John E. Colhoun to bring his family to the upcountry, where conditions were healthier in the late summer than they were in the lowcountry. The letter closes with Jane’s greetings to her aunt Floride, of whom John Green speaks as “Mrs. Colhoun.”

Another previous posting discusses a letter that John E. Colhoun sent on 4 February 1797 from St. Johns Island in the lowcountry to William Waddle at Twelve Mile in Pendleton District.[38] John E. Colhoun’s letter instructed Waddle to plant a large kitchen garden at the Keowee Heights plantation prior to a trip John was intending to make there, and tells Waddle that if he didn’t have enough seed on the plantation, Mrs. Rebecca Pickens could find more for him. As the linked posting points out, Rebecca was John E. Colhoun’s sister Rebecca Calhoun, who married Andrew Pickens and who had moved in 1786 with Andrew and their children to the Hopewell plantation on the Keowee near John E. Colhoun’s Keowee Heights plantation. William Waddle was, I suspect, a relation of the famed educator Moses Waddel (1770-1840), who married John E. Colhoun’s first cousin Catherine Calhoun, a daughter of Patrick Calhoun, in 1795.

John Begins Living Part of Year at Keowee Heights

As has also been previously noted, a 16 April 1798 letter of John E. Colhoun to William Bonneau found in the John Ewing Colhoun Papers at Wilson Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reveals that by that date, John was living at least part of the year at his Keowee Heights plantation in Pendleton District.[39] The letter ends with a statement that Bonneau could write to John E. Colhoun at that place, enclosing letters to Ezekiel Noble, King Street, Charleston. Ezekiel was a nephew of John, son of his sister Catherine Calhoun who married Alexander Noble. John E. Colhoun’s letter to William Bonneau suggests to me that his nephew Ezekiel Noble was living part of the time at John E. Colhoun’s King Street house in Charleston.

On 15 November 1798, John E. Colhoun had a survey for another 500 acres on the Keowee in Pendleton District.[40] The plat states that this land was in Washington District of Pendleton County on branches of the Keowee, waters of the Savannah River, and shows the land bordered on the east by John Green, husband of John E. Colhoun’s niece Jane Kerr, with Joseph Reed bordering on the west. Also bordering on the southwest is a name that appears to be Mr. Calhoun; I take this to be John E. Colhoun himself, and am concluding that this land borders other land of John E. Colhoun’s on the Keowee. As a previous posting has noted, on the same day that John E. Colhoun had this survey for 500 acres, John Green also had a survey for 500 acres on branches of Six Mile Creek and the Keowee waters of the Savannah in Washington District, with General Robert Anderson bordering this tract on the west.[41]

Also noted in a previous posting: on 11 March 1800, John E. Colhoun deeded to John Simpson 50 acres on the west side of Twelve Mile River in Pendleton District, the northeast end of the plantation on which John E. Colhoun resided, bounded by William Gilham, John Simpson, and John Ewing Colhoun.[42] This deed was witnessed by John Green. As the linked posting notes, John Simpson was the husband of John E. Colhoun’s niece Ann Pickens, daughter of Andrew Pickens and Rebecca Calhoun.

John Is Elected U.S. Senator

During these years in which John E. Colhoun had relinquished his law practice in Charleston for the most part, he was focusing on managing his extensive landholdings in both the lowcountry and upcountry while residing in the lowcountry as he set up his Keowee Heights plantation in Pendleton District and began to spend time on it. At the same time, he was also continuously serving in the South Carolina General Assembly. In December 1800, that body elected him to represent South Carolina in the U.S. Senate. John entered the U.S. Senate on 4 March 1801 and would continue serving in the Senate up to his death at his Keowee Heights house on 26 October 1802.[43]

As a previous posting explains, by October 1801, evidence begins to appear of John E. Colhoun’s connection to a Benjamin Green who was, I’m persuaded, a brother of John Green who married John E. Colhoun’s niece Jane Kerr. The linked posting contains digital images of a letter that Benjamin Green sent to John Ewing Colhoun on 15 January 1802.[44] Benjamin Green sent the letter from Charleston to John E. Colhoun in Washington, D.C., addressing him as “Senator in Congress.”

The posting I linked in the previous paragraph discusses the contents of this letter, which shows that Benjamin was in John E. Colhoun’s employ and had stayed at Twelve Mile (i.e., at John E. Colhoun’s plantation at the juncture of Twelve Mile and Keowee Rivers in Pendleton District) until 12 December, and provides news of the upcountry plantation as well as John’s rice plantations in the lowcountry, and of John’s family in Charleston. The letter notes that Benjamin Green had been dividing his time between John E. Colhoun’s “upper and lower settlements” (i.e., the plantations in the upcountry and lowcountry).

This January 1802 letter also reveals that Benjamin Green was tutoring John Ewing Colhoun’s children, a fact confirmed by a 10 December 1802 receipt archived in the collection of John E. Colhoun’s papers either at the South Caroliniana Library or in Wilson Library at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.[45] As I have noted previously, the receipt shows John E. Colhoun’s nephew Ezekiel Pickens paying Benjamin Green on behalf of John’s estate for “teaching school at Mr Colhoun, for one year ending Decr 1st 1802 and for travelling expences to the low Country, a former receipt given for the same having been mislaid.”

On 24 February 1802, Benjamin Green wrote again to John E. Colhoun, writing to John as before as a senator in Washington D.C.: the letter, digital images of which are found at this previous posting, was addressed to “The Hon.^ble John E. Colhoun, Senator in Congress, Washington City.”[46] It does not specify where Benjamin was at the time he sent the letter, though it’s clear from its contents that he was in the South Carolina lowcountry. The letter is transcribed in the posting I have just linked, and again provided news of John E. Colhoun’s plantations in both the lowcountry and upcountry (it notes that the family had not had news from the upcountry plantation after Benjamin and John’s family had left there in December 1801). The letter also sends news of John’s family and of his children’s progress under Benjamin’s tuition.

John Makes His Will, May 1802

On 20 May 1802, John Ewing Colhoun made his will.[47] Because the will is extensive, I won’t transcribe it here. A typewritten transcription of the will filed in Charleston County (another was filed in Pendleton District/Anderson County — these are identical) done by the WPA project in the 1930s for South Carolina Archives is available at FamilySearch.[48]

In his will, John gives his full name, John Ewing Colhoun, and identifies himself as of the parish of St. The will identifies him as of the parish of St. John’s. To his wife Floride, he leaves among other property including enslaved persons their house in Charleston as well as his land on the Santee River and half of the Bonneau’s Ferry tract on which the Colhouns lived. To his son John Ewing Colhoun, John leaves his plantation at the mouth of Twelve Mile River on which he lives in summer, about 307 acres. If John’s son John should die not yet of age, this plantation is to go his brother James Edward. If James Edward should die under age, the plantation is to go to his brother William Sheridan, and if all these sons should die under age, it is to go to their sister Floride. John’s plantation on Little River in Abbeville County is also bequeathed to James Edward along with 640 acres on Twenty Three Mile Creek in Pendleton District. William Sheridan receives a plantation called Trotters Mill Seat on the Savannah in Abbeville, 640 acres, and also 150 acres on the river three miles below. The three sons are to be given a regular collegiate education at some college of note and respectability.

The will names as executors John’s brother-in-law Andrew Pickens, Henry William De Saussure, John Ball, Andrew Norris, and Joseph Calhoun. Andrew Norris was John E. Colhoun’s half-brother, a son of John’s mother Jean Ewing by her husband Robert Norris. Joseph Calhoun was John’s first cousin, a son of his uncle William Calhoun.

The will’s witnesses were Ezekiel Noble, John C. Calhoun, and Alexander Noble. These witnesses were all relatives of John E. Colhoun: Ezekiel and Alexander Noble were sons of his sister Catherine Calhoun and husband Alexander Noble. John Caldwell Calhoun, who would marry John E. Colhoun’s daughter Floride Bonneau Colhoun on 11 January 1811, was a son of John E. Colhoun’s uncle Patrick Calhoun.

On 21 October 1802, John made a codicil to the will naming his nephew Ezekiel Pickens, son of Andrew Pickens and Rebecca Calhoun, another executor. This codicil was witnessed by John’s Pendleton District neighbor Robert Anderson, by John Simpson Jr. husband of Ezekiel Pickens’ sister Ann, and by Benjamin Green Jr., the tutor of John’s children.

Appended to the will is a schedule of lands to be sold by John’s estate. These included: Pimlico plantation, three tracts of 163, 72, and 437 acres, all valued at £4000 sterling; Little Saluda lands valued at £300 sterling; half of Steadman’s mill tract whose total acreage was 1,900 acres, £350 sterling; 150 acres on North Edisto previously belonging to Col. Fisher, £50 sterling; half of 6,000 acres, Roberts Barony, £800 sterling; 995 acres in St. Peter’s parish previously belonging to Charles Wright, £300 sterling; 640 acres on Twenty Three Mile Creek in Pendleton District bought from Francis Bonneau, £300 sterling; 1,352 acres on Coosawhatchie, previously belonging to Charles and Germyn Wright, £2,706 sterling; 3,315 acres on Pickens Bluff of the Savannah previously part of Irvin’s barony, £3,315 sterling; and 640 acres on Twelve Mile Creek in Pendleton District granted to Pierce and mortgaged to John E. Colhoun and R.P. Sanders, £600 sterling.

The will was probated in Charleston County on 11 May 1803 and Ezekiel Pickens qualified as executor at that time. The will filed in Anderson County does not have a probate date, but states that John E. Colhoun added to his original will a set of verbal instructions dated 21 October 1802, which were filed 18 November 1802.

John Dies at Keowee Heights, October 1802

John Ewing Colhoun died at his Keowee Heights plantation in Pendleton District on 26 October 1802. As noted above, the following death notice was published in the Charleston Times on 9 November 1802 and Alexandria, Virginia’s, Advertiser and Commercial Intelligencer on 25 November 1802:[49]

Died at his ſeat in Pendleton district on the 26^thult. in the 53^d year of his age, JOHN EWING COLHOUN, Senator from South Carolina in the Congreſs of the United States.

John Ewing Colhoun was buried at his Keowee Heights plantation in a family cemetery in which John and several of his infant children are buried. As noted previously, this land is now owned by Clemson University and the family cemetery and what remains of his Keowee Heights house — only traces of its foundation — are now in Clemson’s Experimental Forest. Archived in the Mary Stevenson Collection at Clemson University Library’s Special Collection and Archives is an article by Jerry Alexander entitled “Historic Keowee Plantation” from an unidentified and undated newspaper which speaks of the traces of the house that remained when this article was written (“Keowee, Home of John Ewing Colhoun and Graveyard,” box 15, folder 42, mss 353). The article notes that the Keowee Heights house burned at some point in the 19th century and all that remains of it is brick from the huge white columns of its front porch and stone from the foundation. Jerry Alexander also notes that the family cemetery near the plantation house has been vandalized and the tombstone of John E. Colhoun broken by vandals.

According to Alice Watson in a 3 August 1961 newspaper article published in an unidentified newspaper and entitled “Cold Spring and Keowee Once Upstate Homes of the Colhouns,” the date that Keowee Heights burned is not known, but this happened when Mr. B.C. Crawford, father of Sue Crawford Prevost, had rented the house from the Calhouns. The house burned when the Crawford family was away on a trip, and they always felt the house was set on fire. This article is in a file entitled “John E. Colhoun, Keowee, Home of John Ewing Colhoun and Graveyard” in the Mary Stevenson Collection at Clemson University Library’s Special Collections and Archives (box 15, folder 42, mss 353). Alice Watson also states that by 1961, the family cemetery at Keowee Heights had been vandalized and its marble tombstones broken to pieces, “almost beyond deciphering.”

In 1973, Ralph Beaumont Leonard photographed what remained of the Keowee Heights Colhoun family cemetery and John’s tombstone, noting that the graveyard and tombstone had been vandalized prior to that date. His photographs are found in an essay he produced, entitled “The Graveyard of the Keowee Plantation: A Photographic Essay,” now held in a file called “Keowee Plantation Graveyard” Clemson University Library’s Special Collections and Archives (box 1, mss 217). I have uploaded the Leonard’s photo of John’s tombstone to his Find a Grave memorial page with my transcription of its inscription:[50]

Sacred to the Memory of the Honorable John Ewing Colhoun. He was born in the year 1752 and died on the 26th of October 1802. He was a man of a sound understanding improved by liberal culture. Mild in his temper and moderate in his desires, he was but little disturbed by the ordinary calamities of life, compassionate to the distresses and indulgent to the failings of others. He [governed?] his own conduct by the rigorous rules of kings. [Deservedly?] in the confidence of his Country, he filled at the time of his death the high Station of Senator of the United States. He died tranquilly in the bosom of his family, loved, honored, and lamented and looking with humble confidence in God to a happy immortality. By the side of their father repose the mortal remains of three beloved Infants, Benjamin Colhoun, William Sheridan Colhoun, and Caroline Colhoun.

A more recent photo of John’s grave published by John S. Garton in his book Quiet Reflections: The Clemson University Forest shows it to be much broken now, and I suspect the tombstone inscription is now illegible — if the tombstone has, in fact, not by now simply fallen to pieces.[51]

According to Clemson’s Fort Hill and Historic Properties page on Facebook, John E. Colhoun’s tombstone was erected by his widow Floride the year following John’s death, and when Floride had the tombstone made, she wanted it to note that buried beside their father were three children who died in infancy — Benjamin, William Sheridan, and Caroline.[52] As noted above, William was still living when John made his will in May 1802, so he evidently died at some point after that. I do not have specific information about when Benjamin and Caroline were born and died. A.S. Salley simply notes that all three of these children died young.[53] John’s three surviving children, John Ewing, Floride Bonneau, and James Edward, were all minors when John died, with ages ranging from eleven (John Ewing Jr.) to four (James Edward). As I’ve noted in a previous posting, it appears to me that after John’s death, Floride did not retain the tutor John had secured for his children, Benjamin Green, and it’s not clear to me what became of Benjamin after John E. Colhoun died.

On 21 January 1803, John’s cousin John C. Calhoun, who would marry John E. Colhoun’s daughter Floride in 1811, wrote to John E. Colhoun’s nephew Andrew Pickens, son of Andrew Pickens and Rebecca Calhoun, noting the death of “our honoured relation John E. Calhoun.”[54] The letter states,

By his death our country has lost one of its most sincere friends; and our family one of its brightest ornaments. Mr Calhoun by his sperited behaviour in the last congress gained himself much honour in N. England. Indeed the general tenour of his actions, al[t]hough not exhibited upon so elevated a stage as congress, yet have been such as to claim the gratitude of his country. It is probable, dear Andrew, that we shall follow the same presuits of life, that he did, let us therefore be ambitious to emulate his virtues and knowledge.

Because John Ewing Colhoun was a man who held positions of prominence in South Carolina and amassed much wealth there, there’s obviously a world of information to be found about him beyond the information I’ve provided in my sketch above. As his will indicates, he was a very active buyer and seller of real property across South Carolina in the latter part of the 1700s, and there’s much information to be found about his land dealings in the deed books of various South Carolina counties, as well as in documents available at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, many of which can be searched digitally at the SCDAH website. Pendleton District historian Beth Ann Klossky writes about John E. Colhoun,[55]

As a charter member of the Pendleton Farmers Society, Colonel Colhoun was a planter, an able financier and served at one time as the state treasurer. Reportedly, the Negroes who worked the elaborate plantation told stories of Colhoun’s wealth, asserting “that Colhoun was so rich he shod his horses with silver horseshoes.”

And as those observations serve to remind us, quite a bit of John E. Colhoun’s wealth consisted of enslaved human beings he owned and employed on his several plantations to generate wealth for himself and his family, and those human beings, many of whom are named by given names in documents having to do with John E. Colhoun, should not be overlooked and forgotten as John E. Colhoun’s story is told and his life assessed.

John’s Widow Floride in Years Following John’s Death

Following John E. Colhoun’s death, his widow Floride summered at Newport, Rhode Island, and it was there that her daughter Floride Bonneau Colhoun and her cousin John Caldwell Calhoun became more closely acquainted, with the relationship eventually resulting in their marriage. As John Niven notes, when John C. Calhoun became seriously ill with dysentery while studying at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut, Floride invited him to recuperate at her summer home in Newport in 1804, and from that time forward, he was closely connected to Floride’s family.[56] In November, John sailed back to Charleston with Floride and her family, and then five months later, went north again with the Colhouns, intending to study law at Litchfield, Connecticut. From this point forward, Floride became, as Robert Elder thinks, John C. Calhoun’s “patroness.”[57]

Elder thinks that John C. Calhoun had resolved to marry his cousin Floride Bonneau Colhoun by spring of 1808 when he visited the family at their Bonneau’s Ferry plantation on the Cooper River near Charleston.[58] But Floride withheld her consent, since John C. Calhoun had little wealth and her daughter Floride was only sixteen.[59] In summer 1809, John Calhoun asked for Floride’s hand in marriage, and her mother then wrote her daughter from Bonneau’s Ferry — Floride younger was in Newport — to ask her wishes and Floride consented to the marriage to John C. Calhoun.[60] John C. Calhoun and Floride Bonneau Colhoun then married at the Bonneau’s Ferry plantation on 11 January 1811, and following their marriage Floride bought her daughter and son-in-law a house, Oakley Estate, now Dumbarton Oaks, in Georgetown, D.C., where John C. Calhoun was serving in the U.S. House of Representatives.[61] Floride then spent time with her daughter and new son-in-law in D.C., and when John C. Calhoun and wife Floride moved to his Fort Hill plantation in Pendleton District, South Carolina, in 1825, John’s mother-in-law Floride settled at the adjoining Cold Spring plantation, where Floride Bonneau Colhoun died on 21 April 1836.[62]

For a discussion of a 28 May 1805 deed that Floride Bonneau Colhoun made on 28 May 1805 to her niece Ruth Kerr of Abbeville County, South Carolina, see this previous posting.[63]

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[1] See Find a Grave memorial page of John Ewing Colhoun, Colhoun family cemetery, Clemson, Pickens County, South Carolina, created by Deleted User, maintained by Karyn Buckner Garvin, with a tombstone photo uploaded by wdlindsy.

[2] Alexandria [Virginia] Advertiser and Commercial Intelligencer (25 November 1802), p. 3, col. 2; and The Times [Charleston] (9 November 1802), as transcribed in A.S. Salley, “The Calhoun Family of South Carolina,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 7,3 (July 1906), p. 154.

[3] John’s biography in U.S. Congress, Biographical Congressional Directory 1774-1811 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913), p. 524, gives 1749 as the year of birth.

[4] See e.g., “Colhoun, John Ewing, 1749-1802,” in Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress; “John E. Colhoun,” Wikipedia.

[5] South Carolina Will Bk. 1760-7, pp. 181-2.

[6] Botetourt County, Virginia, Deed Bk. 1, pp. 302-4.

[7] An abstract of this deed is in file 128, p. 21, of the Calhoun folders of the Leonardo Andrea Collection. Unless I’m mistaken, the original deed perished in the courthouse fire in Abbeville in 1873; I have not found a state-level record of the deed.

[8] Princeton University, General Catalogue of Princeton University 1746-1906 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1908), p. 97. See also James Spady, “Colhoun, John Ewing,” South Carolina Encyclopedia; Charles Maurice Wiltse, John C. Calhoun: Nationalist, 1782-1828 (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1944), p. 34; Biographical Congressional Directory 1774-1811, p. 524; “Colhoun, John Ewing, 1749-1802,” in Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress; “John E. Colhoun,” Wikipedia; “John Ewing Colhoun Papers, 1774-1961,” collection 130, Wilson Library Special Collections at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill; and Martin Schipper, A Guide to the Microfilm Edition of Records of Antebellum Southern Plantations from the Revolution Through the Civil War, series J: Selections from the Southern Historical Collection, Manuscripts Department, Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, part 3: South Carolina (Bethesda, Maryland: University Publications of America, 1990), pp. 75-9. John Ewing Colhoun Papers, 1774-1961, Abbeville, Charleston, and Pendleton Districts, South Carolina, pp. 75-9, discussing the John Ewing Colhoun Papers, 1774-1961, Abbeville, Charleston, and Pendleton Districts, South Carolina. This guide is available online at LexisNexis website.

[9] Memoirs of the Life of the Reverend George Whitefield, etc., comp. John Gillies(New York: Hodge & Shober, 1774).

[10] The statement that Princeton was “the educational and religious capital of Scottish-Irish America” is in “History of Princeton University” at Wikipedia.

[11] Salley, “The Calhoun Family of South Carolina,” p. 153, citing “Papers of the First Council of Safety of the Revolutionary Party in South Carolina, June-November, 1775,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 1,2 (April 1900), p. 135.

[12] John Drayton and William Henry Drayton, Memoirs of the American Revolution: from its commencement to the year 1776, inclusive, as relating to the state of South-Carolina, and occasionally refering [sic] to the states of North-Carolina and Georgia, vol. 2 (Charleston: Miller, 1821), p. 78.

[13] See Helen G. McCormack, “A Provisional Guide to Manuscripts in the South Carolina Historical Society,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 46,2 (April 1945), p. 105.

[14] Salley, “The Calhoun Family of South Carolina,”p. 154; “John Ewing Colhoun Papers, 1774-1961”; and “John E. Colhoun,” Wikipedia. Spady, “Colhoun, John Ewing,” places John’s entry to the South Carolina General Assembly in 1779.

[15] Spady, “Colhoun, John Ewing.”

[16] Ibid. See also Digital SC Encyclopedia Staff, “Mount Zion College,” South Carolina Encyclopedia.

[17] South Carolina Revolutionary Audited Accounts 1368, available digitally at the website of South Carolina Department of Archives and History.

[18] Spady, “Colhoun, John Ewing”; Biographical Congressional Directory 1774-1811, p. 524; “Colhoun, John Ewing, 1749-1802,” in Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress; and “John Ewing Colhoun Papers, 1774-1961.”

[19] Salley, “The Calhoun Family of South Carolina,”p. 153; Spady, “Colhoun, John Ewing”; and “John Ewing Colhoun Papers, 1774-1961.” Biographical Congressional Directory 1774-1811, p. 524, and “Colhoun, John Ewing, 1749-1802,” in Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress state that he began his practice in Charleston in 1789.

[20] South Carolina Plat Bks. Charleston Series Bk. 6, p. 29; and Abbeville County, South Carolina, Plat Bk. A, p. 8.

[21] South Carolina Plat Bks. Charleston Series Bk. 15, p. 167. And see Pendleton District Historical and Recreational Commission, Pendleton Historic District: A Survey (Pendleton, South Carolina: Pendleton District Historical and Recreational Commission, 1973), p. 20.

[22] Pendleton Historic District: A Survey, p. 20.

[23] Salley, “The Calhoun Family of South Carolina,” p. 154, n. 3, citing Charleston Morning Post and Daily Advertiser for 20 March 1786. See also Biographical Congressional Directory 1774-1811, p. 524, and “Colhoun, John Ewing, 1749-1802,” in Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress

[24] Salley, “The Calhoun Family of South Carolina,” p. 154, citing South-Carolina Gazette and Public Advertiser for 12 February 1785 and Gazette of the State of South Carolina for 14 February 1785. See also “Publications Received” in South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 2,2 (April 1901), p. 162, commenting on Fourth Annual Report of the Historical Manuscript Commission of the American Historical Association, Correspondence of John C. Calhoun, ed. J. Franklin Jameson (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1900).

[25] Charleston Morning Post and Daily Advertiser, Monday, 9 October 1786, transcribed by Salley, “The Calhoun Family of South Carolina,” p. 154. See also Mabel L. Webster, “Marriage and Death Notices from the Charleston Morning Post and Daily Advertiser (Continued), South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 20, 3 (July 1919), p. 215.

[26] Robert L. Meriwether, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. 1: 1810-1817 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1959), p. xxiv.

[27] See Walter B. Edgar and Louise N. Bailey, Biographical Directory of the South Carolina House of Representatives: The Commons House of Assembly, 1692-1775 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1974), p. 87; W. Allan Moore Jr., “The Bonneau Family,” Transactions of the Huguenot Society of South Carolina 52 (1947) pp. 38-9; and J. Russell Cross, Historic Ramblin’s Through Berkeley (Columbia: Bryan, 1985), p. 91.

[28] Charleston County, South Carolina, Wills 1783-1786, Bk. 22, pp. 234-7.

[29] 1790 federal census, Charleston County, South Carolina, St. Philip’s and St. Michael’s Parishes, p. 44. The surname is spelled Coulhoun.

[30] “John Ewing Colhoun Papers, 1774-1961,” collection 130, Wilson Library Special Collections at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

[31] The letter is in the John Ewing Colhoun Papers in the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina.

[32] Mary Esther Huger, The Recollections of a Happy Childhood (Greenville, South Carolina: Keys, 1976), p. 39. Keowee Waltzes was published (sheet music) by George Oates of Charleston in 1847 — see the digital images provided online by the Library of Congress’s Music Division.

[33] Lynne R. Beeson, “In the Face Of Change: An Interpretive Prospectus For The Clemson Experimental Forest” (Dept of Recreation and Park Administration, College of Forest and Recreation Resources, Clemson University, 1977).   

[34] Mary Stevenson, ed., The Diary of Clarissa Adger Bowen, Ashtabula Plantation, 1865 (Pendleton: Foundation for Historic Restoration in Pendleton Area, 1973), pp. 71-3.

[35] John C. Calhoun family papers, 1765-1818, special collections, Rubenstein Library, Duke University, box I, folder I.

[36] This letter is archived in the John Ewing Colhoun Papers in the South Caroliniana library at the University of South Carolina, Columbia.

[37] The letter is in the John C. Calhoun family papers, 1765-1818, special collections, at the Rubenstein Library, Duke University.

[38] The letter is in the John Ewing Colhoun Papers held by Wilson Library at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

[39] The letter is in ibid.

[40] South Carolina State Plat Bks Columbia Series Bk. 37, p. 177.

[41] Ibid., p. 192.

[42] Pendleton District, South Carolina, Deed Bk. E, pp. 212-4.

[43] Spady, “Colhoun, John Ewing”; “Colhoun, John Ewing, 1749-1802,” in Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress; U.S. Congress, Biographical Congressional Directory 1774-1811; and “John E. Colhoun,” Wikipedia.

[44] The letter is in the John Ewing Colhoun Papers in the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina.

[45] My notes are unfortunately not clear regarding where I found and copied this receipt.

[46] The letter is in the “John Ewing Colhoun Papers, 1774-1961,” collection 130, Wilson Library Special Collections at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill; the letter is available digitally at the website for this collection.

[47] Anderson County, South Carolina, Will Bk. 1791-1834, pp. 22-31; Charleston County, South Carolina Will Bk. D, 1800-7, p. 361-4. See also Virginia Alexander, Coleen Morse Elliott, and Betty Willie, Pendleton District and Anderson County, South Carolina, Wills, Estates, Inventories, Tax Returns, and Census Records (Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1980), p. 29.

[48] Charleston County, South Carolina Wills, vol. 29, pp. 445-450.

[49] See supra, n. 2.

[50] See supra, n. 1.

[51] John S. Garton, Quiet Reflections: The Clemson University Forest (Boulder, Colorado: Westcliffe, 2007). The photo is by C. Thomas Wyche and is on an unpaginated page before p. 94.

[52] The Clemson Fort Hill and Historic Properties group on Facebook is here. The posting stating that John E. Colhoun’s widow Floride had his tombstone made in 1803 was made in this group’s pages on 5 March 2016.

[53] Salley, “The Calhoun Family of South Carolina,” pp. 154-5.

[54] The letter is transcribed in Meriwether, ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, vol. 1, pp. 7-9.

[55] Beth Ann Klossky, The Pendleton Legacy (Columbia: Sandlapper, 1971), p. 53.

[56] John Niven, John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union: A Biography (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993), pp. 20-1. See also Robert Elder, Calhoun: American Heretic (New York: Basic, 2021), p. 43f.

[57] Elder, Calhoun: American Heretic, pp. 47, 50, 58. See also Niven, John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union, pp. 22-3.

[58] Elder, Calhoun: American Heretic, p. 77.

[59] Ibid.

[60] Ibid., pp. 77-8. See also Niven, John C. Calhoun and the Price of Union, pp. 32-3. In an article entitled “Historic Notes” in South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 4,2 (April 1903), pp. 190-1, a letter written by Floride Bonneau Colhoun to her nephew Andrew Pickens is transcribed. In 1903, the letter belonged to Rebecca Calhoun (Pickens) Bacon of Columbia, South Carolina. The transcription says that Floride sent this letter on 2 September 1800 from Newport, Rhode Island. But the 1800 date is not correct: in the letter, Floride states that gossip was circulating in Charleston that her daughter Floride was either about to be married or had already married. Floride younger was only eight years old in 1800. Floride elder also sends greetings to Andrew Pickens’ “dear little Francis,” who was born 7 April 1805. I think this letter was written 2 September 1810, not 2 September 1800. The letter is referenced with the same incorrect date in Harriette Kershaw Leiding, Historic Houses of South Carolina (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1921), p. 293.

[61] This information is in the March 2016 posting to the Clemson Fort Hill and Historic Properties group at Facebook cited in n. 52, supra.

[62] See Richard Wright Simpson, History of Old Pendleton District, with a Genealogy of the Leading Families of the District (Anderson, South Carolina: Oulla, 1913), p. 141. See also Elder, Calhoun: American Heretic, p. 334. Huger, The Recollections of a Happy Childhood, p. 39, has a drawing of the Cold Spring house by Mary Stevenson, with a note that the house was gone by 1976.

[63] According to an abstract by James Wooley, the deed is in a Pickens County estate packet for Floride Bonneau Colhoun: see Wooley, A Collection of Upper South Carolina Genealogical and Family Records, vol. 3 (Easley, South Carolina, Southern Historical Press, 1982), p. 46, citing a Pickens County estate packet, n. 70.