He was born in Stuttgart and baptized in the Evangelische Kirchengemeinde (Protestant parish) there on 24 November 1690, son of Johann Pachelbel and his second wife Judith Drommer.
Nothing is known about Charles Theodore's life for 25 years after 1706, when his father died, except the fact that he probably lived in England for some time[3] (his name appears in a 1732 list of subscribers to a volume of harpsichord music published in London[4]).
Pachelbel was living in Boston, Massachusetts, by spring 1733, when he was asked to assist in the installation of the new organ of Trinity Church in Newport, Rhode Island.
[6] He actively participated in the musical life of the city: on 22 November 1737 he organized a concert of vocal and instrumental music, apparently the first public concert in the Charleston area; in February 1740 he succeeded John Salter as organist of St. Philip's Church; and in 1749, one year before he died, he opened a singing school.
Included in the list of Pachelbel's possessions compiled after his death are a harpsichord, a clavichord and collections of sheet music, but none of these seem to have survived.