De Large, Robert Carlos, 1842-1874

Robert Carlos De Large (March 15, 1842 – February 14, 1874) was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from South Carolina, serving 1871 to 1873. He was earlier a delegate to the 1868 state constitutional convention and elected in 1868 to the South Carolina House of Representatives for one term.

De Large was born in Aiken, South Carolina on March 15, 1842, the mixed-race son of a Haitian free woman of color and a Sephardi Jewish father, according to scholar Benjamin Ginsberg. Timothy P. McCarthy suggests both parents were mulatto or mixed race. They were slaveholders and part of the mulatto elite of Charleston, South Carolina. De Large's parents' names are not known, but his father was a tailor and his mother a seamstress. His parents encouraged his education, sending him to North Carolina for primary school; he returned to Charleston and graduated from Wood High School. De Large became a tailor and farmer. As a young man, De Large became a member of the Brown Fellowship Society of Charleston, made up of people of color who had been free before the war. They were among the elite African Americans in the city who were skilled artisans and led the people of color.

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