Tynte, Edward

Governor. Tynte was from a Somerset, England, family that had recently risen to a baronetcy, but neither his parents nor his date of birth are known. His family connection is established through the arms on a large seal that he used to ratify legislative acts in South Carolina. Surviving documents refer to Tynte variously as major or colonel. Other family members attended Oxford, and many of the men who came to South Carolina with Tynte to serve in his administration were lawyers. In a Latin poem expressing high hopes for Tynte’s administration, the Tory writer William King implies that Tynte was also a man of culture: “Tynte was the man who first, from British shore, / Palladian arts to Carolina bore; / His tuneful harp attending Muses strung, / And Phoebus’ skill inspired the lays he sung.”

Frustrated by nearly a decade of paralyzing factionalism between the church and dissenter parties in their colony, the Lords Proprietors decided to institute a wholesale change of government and began by commissioning Tynte as the new governor on December 9, 1708. After almost a year’s delay, Tynte arrived in Charleston and was proclaimed governor on November 26, 1709. Unfortunately, he had little opportunity to realize the proprietors’ ambitions. Tynte died on June 26, 1710, after only seven months in office. The first of the acts that would eventually establish a free school system in the colony was the only notable legislation of his administration. By the terms of his will, Tynte left his entire estate to Frances Killner, spinster of London.

Lesser, Charles H. South Carolina Begins: The Records of a Proprietary Colony, 1663–1721. Columbia: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 1995.