e pleasant life he was
leading and return home as soon as his native country seemed to need
him. He speedily raised a company of cavalry in Charleston, and cast his
lot with the patriots whom he found in arms against the mother-country.
We have no record of his deeds, but we know that he distinguished himself
at Eutaw Springs and at Yorktown, where he was attached to Lafayette's
brigade.

When the war was over, Col. Grimke began the practice of law in
Charleston, and rose in a few years to the front rank at the bar. He
held various honorable offices before he was appointed judge of the
Supreme Court of the State.

Early in life Judge Grimke married Mary Smith of Irish and
English-Puritan stock. She was the great granddaughter of the second
Landgrave of South Carolina, and descended on her mother's side from
that famous rebel chieftain, Sir Roger Moore, of Kildare, who would
have stormed Dublin Castle with his handful of men, and whose handsome
person, gallant manners, and chivalric courage made him the idol of his
party and the hero of song and story. Fourteen children were born to
this couple, all of whom were more or less remarkable for the traits
which would naturally be expected from such ancestry, while in several
of them the old Huguenot-Puritan infusion colored every mental and
moral quality. This was especially notable in Sarah Moore Grimke, the
sixth child, who even in her childhood continually surprised her family
by her independence, her sturdy love of truth, and her clear sense of
justice. Her conscientiousness was such that she never sought to
conceal or even excuse anything wrong she did, but accepted
submissively whatever punishment or reprimand was inflicted upon her.

Between Sarah and her brother Thomas, six years her senior, an early
friendship was formed, which was ever a source of gratification to both,
and which continued without a break until his death. To the influence
of his high, strong nature she attributed to a great extent her early
tendency to think and reason upon subjects much beyond her age. Until
she was twelve years old, a great deal of her time was passed in study
with this brother, her bright, active mind eagerly reaching after the
kind of knowledge which in those days was considered food too strong
for the intellect of a girl. She begged hard to be permitted to study
Latin, and began to do so in private, but her parents, and even her
brother, discouraged this, and she reluctantly