Benjamin Faneuil Dunkin



Benjamin Faneuil Dunkin was a lawyer and politician who became chief justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court.

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on December 2, 1792, he was the son of Edmund Dunkin (died 1811), an immigrant from Ireland, and his wife Susanna Bethune, from a Scottish family settled in Boston, Massachusetts.

After graduating from Harvard University when he was eighteen, he moved to Charleston, South Carolina in 1811. He was elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives and served as its Speaker in 1828 and 1829. Between 1865 and 1868, he was chief justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court. He died on December 5, 1874, at his home in Charleston, South Carolina.

On January 18, 1820, in Washington, District of Columbia, he married Washington Sara Prentiss (1800-1870) and they had three children who all married and raised families: Alfred Huger Dunkin (1822-1906); Mary Augusta Dunkin (1826-1865); and Anna Washington Dunkin (1829-1878).