John Rutledge was born on September 17, 1739, in Charleston, South Carolina, the eldest son of Dr. John Rutledge and Sarah Hext Rutledge. His father was an Irish-born physician; his mother came from a wealthy South Carolina family and inherited substantial property. John grew up among several siblings, including Edward Rutledge, and within Charleston’s prosperous merchant-planter society. The family’s wealth depended upon land and enslaved labor. Rutledge received private schooling and then studied law in England at the Middle Temple. London legal training was a common route for wealthy colonial sons seeking prestige at the bar. He learned English common law, courtroom procedure, constitutional history, and the social conventions of imperial professional life. Returning to Charleston in 1761, Rutledge quickly established a successful practice. His intelligence, forceful speaking, and family connections made him prominent. He married Elizabeth Grimké in 1763, joining another important Charleston family. They eventually had a large household, and Rutledge became both a planter and urban lawyer. His early political career began during the Stamp Act crisis. South Carolina selected him for the Stamp Act Congress in 1765, when he was only in his mid-twenties. He opposed parliamentary taxation but worked within the language of British constitutional rights rather than immediately advocating independence. Before becoming governor, constitutional framer, and chief justice, Rutledge had been shaped by a physician’s household, maternal wealth, Charleston’s Atlantic culture, English legal education, marriage, slaveholding property, and rapid professional success. These advantages gave him confidence and authority, while the death of his father had also required the family to depend heavily on Sarah Rutledge’s management. His early life prepared him to view politics through law and executive power, traits that later made him one of South Carolina’s strongest wartime leaders.