Records of the Pringles of the Scottish Border, by Alex Pringle

Chapter 38

U. S. A.

Charleston, S. C

CHARLES Town, later Charleston, was founded in 1679 by Lord Ashley, Royal grantee of the land there. Thither emigrated

ROBERT PRINGLE

about 1730. He was the second son of Robert, son of Thomas, merchant burgesses of Edinburgh and lairds of Symington, Gala Water, and great-grandson of John Hoppringill of that Ilk. The brick house built by Robert in Tradd Street, Charleston, soon after the great fire in the town in 1740, but recently taken down, bore the inscription " R. P. 1742 '' cut in stone above the door. Robert was a prominent merchant in the town, and also acted for some years as Assistant Judge. Born in 1702 he died in 1776, in the beginning of the American Revolution. By his wife Judith, widow of Stephen brother of William Bull, Lieut.-Governor of South Carolina, he had two sons John-Julius and Robert.

JOHN-JULIUS PRINGLE

was educated at the College of Philadelphia, and read law with John Rutledge and in England, where his published articles on " Colonial Rights '' attracted attention. At the beginning of the American Revolution he went to France, and in 1778 he became secretary to Ralph Izard, U.S. Commissioner in Tuscany. Returning by way of Holland and the West Indies, he was admitted to the Bar in 1781 and attained high rank in his profession. In 1788-89 he was Speaker of the State Assembly, and in the latter year he served for a short time as U.S. District Attorney by special request of General Washington. In 1800 Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State, appointed him to report on any infractions of the treaty with Great Britain that might occur in South Carolina, and from 1792 till 1808 he served as Attorney-General of the State. In 1805 President Jefferson tendered him the Attorney-Generalship of the United States, but family reasons induced him to decline. Mr Pringle was for a few years President of the Trustees of the College of South Carolina.

In the Record Office, London, there is a letter dated Charleston, 3rd August 1776, written by William Bull, younger, to his half-brother John Pringle, then studying in London, in which he gives a graphic and detailed account of the disastrous attempt of a British fleet under Admiral Parker to capture a fort in Charleston Harbour.

Descendants of Mr Pringle play an important part in the life of Charleston to-day. They are also found in California, New Haven and Atlanta, U.S.A., and Biarritz, France.

DR ROBERT PRINGLE (BROTHER)

married Ann-Amelia Garden. They had a son Robert- Alexander, who married Sarah-McKewen Maxwell. They had a son Robert-Alexander, who married Clara-Margaretta Ashmead of Philadelphia. They had five sons and a daughter :

1. James-Maxwell, who married Miss Ford, and has grand- children in New York and Kentucky.

2. Ernest-Henry. See below.

3. Robert-Alexander, who married and died young, without children.

4. Walter, who married Agnes Buist, and had two sons and six daughters.

5. George, who married, and had three sons and two daughters.

6. Amelia-Clarkson.

ERNEST-HENRY PRINGLE (BANKER SON),

was born on 9th August 1849 at Lancaster, Pa, At the age of 11 lie and his elder brother were sent to Scotland and educated at Edinburgh Academy, where he made many friends, with whom he kept in touch all his life. ln 1856 at the end of the Civil War the boys were brought home to South Carolina, and Ernest started his life-work helping his father on his farm near Summerville. Within two or three years he entered a dry goods establishment, a partner in which, being appointed President of the Bank of Charleston, took young Pringle with him as teller in 1873. In 1880 he became cashier, and shortly afterwards he married Mary-Ford Pringle. In July 1889 he became Vice-president, and in 1894 President of the Bank, an office for which he was exceptionally fitted by temperament and education. During the 28 years that he was President the Bank developed from an institution with a paid-in capital of 200,000 dollars, to a paid-in capital of a million dollars with undivided profits of a million dollars.

Mr Pringle died suddenly on 13th March 1922, from heart failure when going to bed. He had lost his wife about three weeks before. As the news of his death spread through the city it caused everywhere a sense of community loss, for he was held in the most general respect as one of the ablest, soundest, and most substantial business men of his time in Charleston.

The Cotton Exchange closed on the 14th in testimony of the loss the business life of the city had sustained (Obituary- Notices).

He had issue: -

1. Ernest-Henry, born 1881, B.A. of the College of Charleston 1900, member of Pringle Brothers, Dry Goods Merchants, Charleston, and Chairman, Vice- President, or Director of about a dozen other companies. He married Nellie McColl, and they have two sons, Ernest-Henry and McColl Pringle.

2. Ashmead-Forrester.

3. Clara-Margaretta (Genealogy of the Charleston Pringles, by a member).

Mentioned in Colonial Families of the United States are :

Ann Pringle, widow of Dr Baker of Charleston, who died in Edinburgh 1804.

Eliza, great granddaughter of Peter Pringle of the Revolutionary War, who married Mr Nicklin, Mayor of Chattanooga.

Ed.-Jenkins Pringle, married in 1834 a daughter of Oliver Hering of Charleston, and was lost with his wife and children on the steamer Pulaski in June 1838.

Maria Pringle, married her cousin a son of Mr Inglis, Chancellor of South Carolina.

Benjamin Pringle, jurist, was born at Richfield, N.Y., in 1807. He received a good education, and studied law. He was Judge of Genesee Courts for one year, served two terms in Congress 1853-57, and in 1863 was in the Legislature. Subsequently he was appointed by President Lincoln a Judge of the Court of Arbitration in Cape Town, under the treaty of 1862 with Great Britain, for the suppression of the slave trade (Appleton's Cyclopœdia).