P.B. S. Pinchback was born to Eliza Stewart and Major William Pinchback, a mulatto woman and Virginia plantation owner, on May 10, 1837. The family was in Georgia at the time, en route to a new home in Mississippi. Major Pinchback had freed the boy's mother from slave status prior to the journey. The birth during an adventuresome move and the status of the first child born after the young woman gained freedom gave the son a spirited personality--rather harsh and bold (Haskins, 1973, p. 5).
When Pinkney was nine he was sent to Gilmore's High School in Cincinnati, Ohio, a progressive school that admitted blacks and mulattoes. At Gilmore's he escaped class as often as possible, preferring to shoot craps with fellow truants and to associate with gamblers at the Cincinnati docks (Haskins, 1973, p. 7).
His schooling at Gilmore's was cut short upon the death of his father. At the event of this death, Eliza Stewart lost her status as mistress of a wealthy plantation owner and the financial security she had known. Although the elder Pinchback had tried to provide for her and their five children, his eastern white relatives purloined the inheritance as well as attempting to capture her as a slave. Eliza took the children and fled penniless to Cincinnati.
An older brother, Napoleon, became mentally ill from the stresses of family upheaval, and, at twelve years old, Pinkney was faced with supporting his mother and siblings. Although not able to completely comprehend the responsibilities thrust upon him, his father's strong character and his mother's pragmatic sense of reality enabled him to function as breadwinner for the family. He worked at the docks, assisting debarking white travelers. He signed on as a cabin boy on the canal boats at a salary of eight dollars a month, which he sent home to the family.
Pinkney, or "Pinch" as he came to be nicknamed, became the personal servant and protege of George Devol and Canada B...