John Gadsden (1787–1831), attorney and public official, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and graduated from Yale College (later Yale University) in 1804. Having been admitted four years later to the Charleston bar, he was elected city attorney in 1809. Gadsden served in the South Carolina militia during the War of 1812 and rejoined the service in 1818 as a judge advocate. He was also a member of the state House of Representatives, 1819–20, United States district attorney for South Carolina, 1820–31, and intendant (mayor) of Charleston, 1827–29. Gadsden owned sixteen slaves in 1820 and six a year prior to his death in Charleston (BDSCHR description begins Walter B. Edgar and others, eds., Biographical Directory of the South Carolina House of Representatives, 1974– , 5 vols. description ends , 1:299, 304, 5:98–9; John Belton O’Neall, Biographical Sketches of the Bench and Bar of South Carolina [1859], 2:51–6; Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates of Yale University … 1701–1910 [1910], 82; Charleston City Gazette and Daily Advertiser, 24 Aug. 1808; Charleston Courier, 17 Oct. 1809, 18 Nov. 1820, 4 Sept. 1827; Charleston City Gazette and Commercial Daily Advertiser, 10 June 1812; Charleston Carolina Gazette, 28 Feb. 1818; DNA: RG 29, CS, S.C., Charleston, 1820, 1830; JEP description begins Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States description ends , 3:236, 240, 401, 405, 4:160 [23 Jan., 7 Feb. 1821, 3, 10 Jan. 1825, 21 Feb. 1831]; Savannah Georgian, 8 Sept. 1829; gravestone inscription in Saint Philip’s Episcopal Church Cemetery, Charleston).