JUDGE CHARLES PINCKNEY TOWNSEND is the oldest practicing lawyer of the South Carolina bar and the oldest living graduate of South Carolina College. All his early contemporaries who were admitted to practice before the war between the states have long since laid down their briefs or have been called to the bar of final jurisdiction. Judge Townsend has these and many other interesting distinctions of long and honorable service as a lawyer, judge and leader in public affairs of his home state.

   He has spent all his life at Bennettsville in Marlboro County, where he was born July 1, 1835, a son of Mekin and Rachel I. (Pearson) Townsend. Through his father he is of English and through his mother is of Welsh descent. His great-grandfather was a Revolutionary soldier. His grandfather was Jabez Townsend, a native of Marlboro County and an extensive planter there. Mekin Townsend was a merchant at Bennettsville, served four years as county sheriff, and died in December, 1854, at the age of forty-five. Rachael Pearson, also a native of Marlboro County, was a daughter of Lemuel Pearson of the same county, and granddaughter of Moses Pearson, who served with the rank of captain in the Revolutionary war.

   Judge Townsend was the third in a family of eight children and the only one now living. He graduated from South Carolina College in December, 1854, and by subsequent study was admitted to the bar in 1857. He therefore appeared in court and as a young attorney pleaded his first cases several years before the storm of war broke. During that war he spent four years in the Confederate army, being captain of Company G of the Eighth South Carolina Volunteers. Before the war he had represented Marlboro County in the Legislature during 1858-59, and in 1862 was again elected a member of the Legislature. More than thirty years later he was chosen to a seat in the General Assembly. In 1866 he was elected commissioner in equity and in 1871 chosen to the office of circuit judge, a position he honored by his ability and faithful and efficient administration. He also-served four years as assistant attorney general of the state and three years as assistant United States district attorney. Judge Townsend was for several years private secretary to Senator J. L. McLaurin at Washington. He was also captain of a militia company for two years. He is the oldest Mason in Marlboro County having been affiliated with that order for sixty-two years. He has also been a constant and faithful member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

   In December, 1859, Judge Townsend married Amanda McConnell, of Columbia. The children of that union were: Sadie, widow of T. W. Bauchier; Florida, deceased; Nellie, widow of Dr. A. S. Townsend; Rachael, wife of D. W. Smith; Benjamin; Fannie, deceased; Charles, deceased; Edgar, who is living. On October 3, 1889, Judge Townsend married Nannie Henley. By his second wife he has three children: Charles P., who served as a first lieutenant in an Engineer Corps in France; William B., who was captain of the Twenty-Seventh Infantry, United States Regular Army, was sent to Siberia; and Elinor, a student in Converse College at Spartanburg.