Early Life
Born Pinckney Benton Stewart in May 1837 in Macon, Bibb County, Georgia, his parents were Eliza Stewart, a former slave, and William Pinchback, a planter and her former master. They lived together as husband and wife as interracial marriage was forbidden by state law. They had diverse ethnic origins; Eliza Stewart was classified as mulatto, of African, Cherokee, Welsh and German ancestry; and William Pinchback was of European-American descent: with Scots-Irish, Welsh and German ancestry. The children had a majority of European ancestry. Shortly after Pinckney's birth, his father William purchased a much larger plantation in Mississippi, and moved his entire family there.
Pinckney Stewart, as he was then called as a "natural" (or illegitimate) son of his father, was brought up in relatively affluent surroundings. He and his four siblings were raised as white, and his parents sent him north to Cincinnati, Ohio, to attend school. In 1848, Pinchback's father died. William Pinchback's relatives disinherited his mulatto common-law wife and children and claimed his property in Mississippi.
Fearful that the Pinchbacks might try to claim her five children as slaves, Eliza Stewart fled with her children to Cincinnati in the free state of Ohio. Pinckney at the age of 11 left school and worked on river and canal boats. For a while he resided in Terre Haute, Indiana, working as a hotel porter. During that time he was still known as Pinckney B. Stewart, as he had not yet adopted the surname Pinchback.
Read more about this topic: P. B. S. Pinchback
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