Editing Langdon Cheves (section)

==Personal life==
===Family===
Cheves met his wife, Mary Elizabeth Dulles, on a return trip from [[Montréal]]. She was a young Charleston resident at boarding school in Philadelphia, rooming with Cheves's law partner's sister-in-law. Cheves's party agreed to escort the two girls home to Charleston. They were engaged to be married by December 1805.{{sfn|Huff|1977|p=36}}

They were married on May 6, 1806, at the Dulles home in Charleston.{{sfn|Huff|1977|p=37}} The couple had fourteen children including proslavery essayist [[Louisa Susannah Cheves McCord|Louisa McCord]]. Their eldest son, Joseph, attended Yale before transferring to Harvard, where he was a member of the [[Porcellian Club]]. Joseph graduated in 1826 and read law in New York City. Alexander Cheves attended the [[United States Military Academy]] at West Point before studying and practicing law in Baltimore.{{sfn|Huff|1977|pp=133–34}} He later succumbed to [[alcoholism]] and became estranged from his father.

Mary died on April 5, 1836, at the age of forty-six.

===Religion===
Cheves was a lifelong Presbyterian.

===Civic organizations===
In 1814, he was elected a member of the [[American Antiquarian Society]].<ref>[http://www.americanantiquarian.org/memberlistc American Antiquarian Society Members Directory]</ref> In 1821, Cheves was elected as a member of the [[American Philosophical Society]] and Mercantile Library Association in Philadelphia.<ref>{{Cite web|title=APS Member History|url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=1821&year-max=1821&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced|access-date=2021-04-05|website=search.amphilsoc.org}}</ref>{{sfn|Huff|1977|p=131}}

===Views on evolution===
Like many wealthy men of his day, Cheves was interested in science. The physician and [[geologist]] [[Joseph Le Conte]] was an acquaintance. In his autobiography, Le Conte wrote that Cheves had articulated to him a theory of evolution almost identical to [[Charles Darwin]]'s, long before Darwin published his ''[[Origin of Species]]''.<ref>{{Cite book
 | last1 = Dabney | first1 = Virginius
 | author-link = Virginius Dabney
 | title = Liberalism in the South
 | location = [[Chapel Hill, NC]]
 | publisher = [[University of North Carolina Press]]
 | year= 1932
 | pages = 84
 | isbn = 978-0-404-00146-9 }}</ref> However, Cheves never published his ideas on the subject.