South Carolina - Land Grants (1784-1800)

This data set is an index to South Carolina land grants from 1784-1800. Information listed in this index includes the name of the individual receiving the grant, the year in which the land grant was issued, and source information including the class number, volume number, and page number where the original record may be found. The land grant records this index references are located at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History in Columbia. The same records can also be found at the Family History Library (FHL) in Salt Lake City, Utah on microfilms 022531-022580. The microfilmed copies of these records available from the FHL may also be circulated to your local Family History Center.

There were several ways to acquire first title to lands, but usually they followed the four steps of petitions, warrants, survey/plat, and grant/patent. The petition is a request to take up land. The warrant certifies the right to a specific acreage and authorizes an official surveyor to survey it, assuming no prior and conflicting claims. The plat, sometimes called a survey, is the surveyor's drawing of the legal descriptions so that the land is identifiable. The patent/grant is the government's or proprietor's passing of title to the patentee/grantee. This is the first-title deed and the true beginning of private ownership of the land. Land grants are especially useful in genealogical research for locating an individual in a particular place and time. (Taken from Luebking, Sandra Hargreaves. Research In Land and Tax Records. In The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy, ed. Loretto Dennis Szucs and Sandra Hargreaves Luebking (Salt Lake City: Ancestry, 1997)).

Field Example

Generally, you'll find the following information about an individual included in this data set:

Name — - The name of the individual who received the land grant.

In some records, you will find three question marks in place of the given name or surname. This indicates that the name was not listed on the original record. You may also find question marks in place of missing letters. A question mark after a name indicates that the name spelling was unclear. You may also occasionally find the same record listed in the index under two different name spellings. Please note that not all unusual and uncertain names were noted by question marks, so always be sure to check under various spellings if you are having trouble locating a name.

You may have difficulty locating some names for the following reasons:
• Some given names have been abbreviated. For example, "Robert" may appear as "Robt," and "Elizabeth" as "Eliz."
• Some given names are misspelled, contain typos, or may be spelled unusually.
• Some given and middle names are truncated. Specifically this happens when the name, including the spaces between the given name, middle name, and last name, is longer than twenty-three characters. For example, "McCormack, Annabelle Margaret" would be listed as "McCormack, Annabelle Mar." If you are unable to locate a particular given name and surname, try switching the given name to an initial, abbreviation, or possible misspelling. If the surname is not common, you may want to search only on the surname.

Page Number — The page number on which the individual can be found in the original record.

Volume Number — This field lists volume in which the record may be found in the original records.

Class Number — One group of land grants is collected into a 23 volume series. Another group is collected into a 76 volume series. The first group is called Class 1, the second Class 2. There are overlapping years between the two classes. In all cases in this index, those records originating from Class 1 are blank in this field. All other records that have this field populated are from Class 2.