Gilbert Pillsbury
Gilbert Pillsbury was the Reconstruction mayor of Charleston, South Carolina, serving one term from 1868 to 1871. He ran against William Patton and Chancellor Lesesne. Because of election challenges, he was installed as mayor only in May 1869. He was renominated for a second term in 1871, but he lost to Johann Andreas Wagener.
Pillsbury graduated from Dartmouth College in 1841 and served in the Massachusetts State Senate in 1854.
Pillsbury was an abolitionist who, during the Civil War, headed to the South as an agent of the Freedman's Bureau. He was originally stationed in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina before moving to Charleston, South Carolina with his wife in October 1865. In Charleston, he worked to educate freed blacks and was placed in charge of abandoned property. In 1870, Pillsbury lived at 9 George St., and from 1872 to his death on January 4, 1893, he lived in Massachusetts.
