Wilmot Gibbes deSaussure was born on July 23, 1822, in Charleston, South Carolina, to Henry A. deSaussure and Susan Boone. His father was a lawyer who owned $12,000 of real estate in 1850. DeSaussure grew up in Charleston, and he enrolled at the University of South Carolina in 1838. He graduated two years later and established a legal practice in partnership with his father.

 

By 1850, he owned $10,000 of real estate. He married Martha Gourdin, and they had at least ten children: Susan, born around 1847; Henrietta, born around 1848; Eloise, born around 1849; Henry, born around 1851; Isabel, born around 1853; Wilmot, born around 1854; Peter, born around 1857; Sarah, born around 1858; John, born around 1861; and Martha, born around 1863.

 

Charleston voters elected deSaussure to the South Carolina General Assembly in 1848, and he served five terms over the next fifteen years. During the secession crisis, he served as a colonel in the 1^st South Carolina Militia Artillery, and he took part in the bombardment of Fort Sumter in April 1861. He was promoted to brigadier general in the South Carolina militia in August 1861, and he became adjutant general and inspector general of the militia in April 1862. He also served as state Secretary of the Treasury. He defended Charleston during the Union army’s siege in 1863 and resisted Union General William T. Sherman’s march through South Carolina during the winter of 1864-65.

 

DeSaussure resumed his legal practice after the war, and by 1870, he owned $10,000 of real estate and $2,000 of personal property. He published several works on South Carolina history, and he served as president of the Huguenot Society, the Charleston Library Society, the St. Andrew’s Society, and the St. Cecilia Society. His health declined in the 1880s, and he travelled to Ocala, Florida, in hopes of recovering. He died there on February 1, 1886.

 

Image: Wilmot Gibbes deSaussure (courtesy Wikicommons)

SOURCES