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A descendant of one of South Carolina’s oldest French Huguenot families, Edmund Ravenel was born in 1797 to planter Daniel Ravenel and Catherine Prioleau Ravenel. He, like so many Charlestonians of the time, received his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1819 before returning to his hometown to practice medicine. He joined the Medical Society on November 1, 1822.

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In January 1824, he was appointed, alongside Samuel Henry Dickson, Henry R. Frost, James Moultrie, Jr., and Thomas G. Prioleau, to the Committee on the Medical College, charged with planning every detail of the school’s formation. That April, he was elected to the professorship of Chemistry & Pharmacy, in which he served until his resignation in 1834. Ravenel was an outspoken member of faculty, demanding more faculty control over the Medical College as early as 1831. From 1834 until 1835, he served on the faculty of the Medical College of the State of South Carolina before resigning his position to move to the Grove Plantation on the Cooper River. He continued to practice medicine, particularly at his summer home on Sullivans Island throughout the 1840s and 1850s. Following the Civil War, he moved back to Charleston but, nearly blind, no longer practiced medicine.

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Ravenel was deeply interested in conchology and paleontology, publishing a catalog of over 700 specimens he had collected in 1834. By the 1860s, he had collected over 3,000 species of mollusks. In addition to his scientific interests, Ravenel was also a staunch proponent of states’ rights, secession, and the institution of slavery. On the eve of the Civil War, his personal slaveholdings totaled around $64,000.

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Ravenel died in Charleston at the age of seventy-two from a fall at his home on Meeting Street, likely caused by complications from typhoid fever. His funeral was held at the French Huguenot Church, and he is buried at Somerton Plantation in Berkeley County.

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(Image Description: Letter of application from Edmund Ravenel for the position of Chair of Chemistry and Pharmacy. Waring Historical Library, Manuscript Collection, MSS 45.)