Sir Egerton Leigh, 1st Baronet

Sir Egerton Leigh, 1st Baronet (11 October 1733 – 15 September 1781) was a British colonial jurist, who became HM Attorney-General of South Carolina.[1] He was a Loyalist who permanently fled South Carolina in 1774 for England.

The son of Peter Leigh and Elizabeth née Latus, he was educated at Westminster School, London,[2] before emigrating to America where his father was Chief Justice of South Carolina.

Leigh became a lawyer and served as a Member of Council and a Judge of the Vice-Admiralty Court, before becoming Surveyor-General of South Carolina. He was appointed Attorney-General of South Carolina by King George III in 1765 and, on 15 May 1773, was created a Baronet, styled "of South Carolina, America".[3]

In 1756 he married Martha Bremar (died 1801) and they had 13 children, including: Martha Leigh who married Nathan Garrick; Elizabeth Leigh who married Lieutenant-Colonel Friedrich Wilhelm, Baron von der Malsburg; Harriet Leigh who married Captain James Burnett, RM ; the Revd Sir Egerton Leigh, 2nd Baronet (born 1762); Sir Samuel Leigh, author of "Munster Abbey, a Romance: Interspersed with Reflections on Virtue and Morality" and father of Sir Samuel Egerton Leigh, 3rd Baronet (born 1796);[4] and, Thomas Leigh a plantation owner in Georgetown County, where he remained settled after the American Revolutionary War.

See also

References

  1. ↑ www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
  2. ↑ Burke's Peerage & Baronetage (1832 edn)
  3. ↑ Tracts of the American Revolution 1763-1776, ed. Merrill Jensen
  4. ↑ www.burkespeerage.com

Further reading

Baronetage of Great Britain
New creation Baronet
(of South Carolina)
1773–1781 		Succeeded by
Egerton Leigh
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