South Carolina Colonial Records

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U.S. Colonial Records

South Carolina

Colonial Records

Online Records

• 1671-1754- Colonial Records. South Carolina. Secretary of the Province. Images only. A Partially digitized index is available here.
• 1716-1732- Court Records. South Carolina (Colony) Court of Vice-admiralty. Images only.
• 1716-1789- Pre-federal Admiralty Court records, province and state of South Carolina, 1716-1789. Images only.
• 1731-1775- Memorials of seventeenth and eighteenth century South Carolina land titles and index to auditor general memorials. Images only.
• 1731-1776- South Carolina memorials; registration of land grants, 1731-1776 and index. Images only.
• 1731-1861; indexes, 1688-1872- South Carolina land plats. Images only.
• 1734-1860; index, 1709-1840- Mortgage records. Images only.
• 1763-1764- Royal Land Grants in South Carolina, Book XX. Images only.
• 1771-1868- Miscellaneous records. Images, and some indexed.
• Genealogical folders in the Leonardo Andrea collection : collection of the late Leonardo Andrea. Images only.

History

Charleston, established by British settlers in 1670, was the first permanent settlement in the Carolinas. Prior to the settlement of Charleston, attempts to settle were made by French Huguenots and Spaniards. In 1669, the Fundamental Orders were written, making the Anglican Church to be the official church. In 1706, the Carolinas was divided into 12 parishes, and in 1712 it was divided into the two provinces of North and South Carolina. South Carolina officialy became a royal colony of Great Britain in 1719.

Earliest Church Records	Earliest Land Records	Earliest Court Records	Earliest Newspapers
1694	1671	1671	1732

Resources

Church Records

• An historical account of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South Carolina : from the first settlement of the province, to the War of the Revolution; with notices of the present state of the church in each parish and some account of the early civil history of Carolina, never before published by Frederick Dalcho. (1820. Reprint. Columbia, South Carolina : South Carolina Tricentennial Comm., 1970).
• Asbury's South Carolina Visits: Abstracted from his Journal by Harold Lawrence. (Tignall, GA: Boyd Publishing, 1988).
• Early Quaker Records of South Carolina, 1750-1815 Compiled by Thomas W. Marshall. (1933. Reprint. Nashville, TN: Historical Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, n.d.).
• History of the German settlements and of the Lutheran Church in North and South Carolina : from the earliest period of the colonization of the Dutch, German and Swiss settlers to the close of the first half of the present century by Gotthardt Bernheim. (Philadelphia: Lutheran Book Store, 1872). Available digitally on Archive.org
• History of Methodism in South Carolina by Albert Micajah Shipp. (Nashville, TN: Southern Methodist Publishing House, 1884). Available digitally through Archive.org.
• History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina by George Howe. 3 Vols. (Columbia: Duffie and Chapman, 1870).
• Inventory of the church archives of South Carolina Presbyterian Churches : 1969 arrangement with indexes prepared by South Carolina Historical Records Survey, Works Progress Administration.
• South Carolina Baptists, 1670-1805 by Leah Townsend. (Florence, SC: Florence Printing Co., 1935).

Court Records

• Abstracts of the Wills of the State of South Carolina by Caroline T. Moore. (Columbia, SC: R.L. Bryan Co., 1960-1969).
• Commissions and instructions from the lords proprietors of Carolina to public officials of South Carolina : 1685-1715 Edited by A.S. Salley, Jr., Secretary of the Historical Commission of South Carolina. (Columbia, South Carolina : Printed by the State Co., 1916).
• Indexes to the County Wills of South Carolina [1766-1864] by Martha Lou Houston. (1939. Reprint. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1964).
• The Journal of the Commons House of Assembly [1736-1754] by South Carolina Assembly. (Columbia: Historical Commission of South Carolina, 1951).
• The Laws of the Province of South Carolina, in Two Parts by Nicholas Trott. (1736. Reprint. Woodbridge, CT: Research Publications, 1978).
• Probate Records of South Carolina [1746-1821] by Brent H. Holcomb. 3 Vols. (Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1977).
• The Public laws of the State of South Carolina, from its First Establishment as a British Province to the Year 1790, Inclusive by John Faucheraud Grimke. (1790. Reprint. Woodbridge, CT: Research Publications, 1978). Available digitally through Archive.org.
• Records of the Court of Chancery of South Carolina, 1671-1779 by Anne King Gregorie. (Washington, D.C. : American Historical Association, 1950).
• Records of the Secretary of the Province of South Carolina, 1692-1721 by Caroline T. Moore. (Columbia: R.L. Bryan Co., 1978).
• Records of the Secretary of the Province and the Register of the province of South Carolina, 1671-1675 by A.S. Salley. (Columbia: Historical Commission of South Carolina, 1944).
• South Carolina Begins: The Records of a Proprietary Colony, 1663-1721 by Charles H. Lesser. (Columbia: Department of Archives and History, 1995).
• South Carolina Court Records: An Introduction for Genealogists by Alexia J. Helsley and Michael E. Stauffer. (Columbia: Department of Archives and History, 1993).

Land Records

• North Carolina Grants in South Carolina by Brent H. Holcomb. (Clinton, South Carolina : B.H. Holcomb, 1975-1976).
• South Carolina Deed Abstracts, 1719-1772 by Clara A. Langley. 4 Vols. (Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1983).
• South Carolina Memorials, 1731-1776: Abstracts of Selected Land Records from a Collection in the Department of Archives and history, Columbia, South Carolina by Katie-Prince Ward Esker. (2 Vols. (New Orleans: Polyanthos, 1973-1977).
• Warrants for Land in South Carolina, 1672-1711 by A.S. Salley. (1910. Reprint. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1973).

Manuscript Collections

• Colonial families of South Carolina compiled by Motte Alston Read from many sources. (Salt Lake City, Utah : Filmed by the Genealogical Society of Utah, 1952).
• A Guide to the Manuscript Collection of the South Caroliniana Library by Alan H. Stokes. (Columbia: The Library, 1982).
• Local and Family History in South Carolina, a Bibliography by Richard N. Côté. (Easley, SC: Southern Historical Press, 1981).
• Records in the British Public Record Office Relating to South Carolina, 1663-1710. 5 Vols. (Atlanta: Foote and Davies Co., 1928-1947).
• Sources of Genealogical Research in the Winthrop College Archives and Special Collections. (Rock Hill, SC: Dacus Library, n.d.).
  

Other

• Black majority : Negroes in colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion by Peter H. Wood. (New York, New York : Knopf, 1974).
• Colonial forts of South Carolina, 1670-1775 by Larry E. Ivers. (Columbia, South Carolina : University of South Carolina Press, 1970).
• Colonial and Revolutionary history of upper South Carolina by J. B. O. Landrum. (Salt Lake City, Utah : Digitized by FamilySearch International, 2013).
• Colonial South Carolina: A Political History, 1663-1763 by M. Eugene Simmons. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1966).
• A Contribution to the History of the Huguenots of South Carolina, Consisting of Pamphlets by Samuel Dubose and Frederick A. Porcher. (New York: Knickerbocker Press, 1887).
• Directory of Scots in the Carolinas, 1680-1830 by David Dobson. (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1986).
• First Settlers of South Carolina, 1670-1680 by Agnes Leland Baldwin. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1969).
• Historical Collections of South Carolina: Embracing Many Rare and Valuable Pamphlets, and other Documents Relating to the History of That State, from its First Discovery to its Independence, in the year 1776 by Bartholomew Rivers Carroll. 2 Vols. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1836).
• The Huguenots of Colonial South Carolina by Arthur Henry Hirsch. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1928).
• Marriage Notices in the South Carolina and American General Gazette from May 30, 1766, to February 28, 1781, and in its Successor the Royal Gazette (1781-1782) by A.S. Salley. (Columbia: State Co., 1914).
• Narratives of Early Carolina, 1650-1708 by A.S. Salley. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911).
• South Carolina Colonial Soldiers and Patriots by Leonardo Andrea. (Columbia: R.L. Bryan, 1952).
• The South Carolina Regulators by Richard Maxwell Brown. (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963).
• South Carolina Tax List, 1733-1742 by Tony Draine. (Columbia: Congaree Publications, 1986).
• Upper Beat of Saint John's Berkely, a Memoir by Frederick A. Porcher. (n.p.: Huguenot Society of South Carolina, 1906).