South Carolina Governor, Author. He was educated at the Nassau Grammar School and at Princeton. After Princeton he continued his education in England and then in Charleston where he read law in the office of Charles Cotesworthy Pinckney. He was admitted to the bar and established a law practice. Public service began for Drayton with his election to the South Carolina House in 1792. He represented St. Philip & St. Michael parishes in the Tenth, Eleventh and Thirteenth General Assemblies. On December 6, 1798 he was elected Lieutenant Governor of South Carolina and resigned from the House. By the following month, then Governor Edward Rutledge died and Drayton was elevated to the Governorship. He also was elected as Governor later that year on December 4, 1800 to a full four year term. After his term of Governor expired he again was elected to the South Carolina House of Representative, then as a State Senator from 1806 to 1809. On December 7, 1808 he was chosen Governor by the legislature and he vacated his Senate seat to accept the two year term. In December of 1812 he was appointed United States District judge by President James Madison. Drayton was also considered a writer, botanist and artist. In 1794 he published "Letters Written During a Tour through the Northern and Eastern States" a work which critically examined the educational difference between South Carolina and the North. Shortly thereafter, he wrote "A View of South Carolina, as Respect Her Natural and Civil Concerns", a book noted for its contribution to botanical knowledge and for the inclusion of watercolor drawings. His last publication was his father's "Memoirs of the American Revolution" (1821). He was inducted into the Royal Society of Sciences at Gottingen Germany in 1804.