Henry William DeSaussure (1763–1839), attorney and public official, was born in Pocotaligo in Old Granville County (later Jasper County), South Carolina, and educated at private schools in Beaufort and Charleston. Having assisted in the defense of Charleston, he was captured when the city fell into British hands in May 1780, confined on a prison ship, and then sent north to Philadelphia for exchange. Following his arrival there, DeSaussure studied law under Jared Ingersoll and was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar in 1784. He returned to Charleston the following year and established a legal practice. A Federalist, defender of Low-Country interests, opponent of protective tariffs, and a Unionist during the Nullification crisis early in the 1830s, DeSaussure attended South Carolina’s 1790 constitutional convention and sat for seven terms in the state legislature between 1791 and 1808. He served briefly as director of the United States Mint in 1795 and was a presidential elector for John Adams the following year. DeSaussure sat on the five-person South Carolina Court of Equity, 1808–24, was one of two chancellors of the succeeding tribunal, the Court of Appeals in Equity, 1824–37, and published four volumes of court reports, 1817–19. A longtime supporter of South Carolina College (later the University of South Carolina), he was a member of its board of trustees, 1801–05 and 1808–37. Although DeSaussure moved to Columbia in 1812, he died during a visit to Charleston (DAB description begins Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography, 1928–36, 20 vols. description ends ; BDSCHR description begins Walter B. Edgar and others, eds., Biographical Directory of the South Carolina House of Representatives, 1974– , 5 vols. description ends , 4:154–6; John Belton O’Neall, Biographical Sketches of the Bench and Bar of South Carolina [1859], 1:243–52; Walter Edgar, ed., The South Carolina Encyclopedia [2006], 260–1; Heitman, Continental Army description begins Francis B. Heitman, comp., Historical Register of Officers of the Continental Army during the War of the Revolution, April, 1775, to December, 1783, rev. ed., 1914, repr. 1967 description ends , 195; Dorothy Twohig, ed., Journal of the Proceedings of the President, 1793–1797 [1981], 331; JEP description begins Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States description ends , 1:194 [10 Dec. 1795]; Charleston Courier, 1 Apr. 1839; gravestone inscription in First Presbyterian Churchyard, Columbia).