Weld family (Family : Weld, Theodore Dwight, 1803-1895)

John Faucheraud Grimké was born in South Carolina on December 16, 1752, the son of John Paul Grimké and Mary Faucheraud. While studying law in London, he was among a group of Americans who petitioned King George III concerning measures that he believed infringed on colonial rights. Upon returning home, Grimké served in the Revolutionary War as a lieutenant colonel, fighting at Eutaw Springs and Yorktown. Postwar, he practiced law and served as a judge on the Supreme Court of South Carolina. He published several works on law, including The Public Laws of the State of South Carolina (1790) and Duties of Executors and Administrators of Estates (1797).

In 1784, he married Mary Smith, the daughter of a wealthy and well-connected family in Charleston. Her ancestors included two colonial governors and a speaker of the Commons House Assembly. The couple, who by this time were wealthy slave-owners in Charleston, had fourteen children, three of whom died in infancy and early childhood. The Grimkés were an active and well-read family, and at least three of the sons, Thomas Smith Grimké (1786-1834), Frederick Grimké (1791-1863), and Henry Grimké (1801-1852), followed in the footsteps of their father and studied law. Frederick, who moved to Chillicothe, Ohio, was a judge of the Ohio Supreme Court and wrote on many topics pertaining to political science and philosophy. In 1848, he published his best-known work, Nature and Tendency of Free Institutions . Thomas Grimké was also a scholar, a philanthropist, and a member of the American Peace Society and the American Colonization Society. He had a particularly strong influence on his younger sisters, Sarah (1792-1873) and Angelina (1805-1879). During childhood, he supplemented Sarah's limited education by sharing his school lessons with her; she often expressed her desire to emulate her father and study law like her brothers.

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