[1] Francis spent his formative years either at his family's townhouse in Charleston or on their plantation in Stateburg, South Carolina.

[3] Rutledge was ordained deacon on May 9, 1823, by the Bishop of South Carolina Nathaniel Bowen, and began officiating at Christ Church the same year.

He was ordained priest in St Paul's Church, Radcliffe, South Carolina, on November 20, 1825, by Bishop Bowen.

Both his father and his uncle, Edward, would end up captured by the British during the American Revolution and were held as political prisoners in Castillo de San Marcos, in Saint Augustine in 1780, a city that Francis would call home several decades later.

And finally, his uncle on his mother's side was Francis Kinloch Huger, a physician and artillery officer who was most well known for his failed attempt to rescue Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette from captivity in Austria during the French Revolution.