South Carolina Genealogy

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South Carolina Genealogy Research Guide

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South Carolina Genealogy Research Guide

Quick Facts

South Carolina rewards researchers who understand its shifting jurisdictions and its late start on civil registration. One of the original thirteen colonies, it grew from a proprietary venture centered on Charles Town into a royal colony, became the eighth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, and was the first state to secede in 1860. Because statewide registration of births, marriages, and deaths came only in the twentieth century, the richest evidence for most families lies in colonial and district records, church registers, land grants, and probate files.

• Capital: Columbia. Charles Town (Charleston) was the colonial and early-state capital; the seat of government was moved inland to Columbia in 1786, and the legislature first met there in 1790.
• Statehood: one of the original thirteen colonies and the eighth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, on May 23, 1788. South Carolina seceded on December 20, 1860 — the first state to do so — and was readmitted in 1868.
• Land type: South Carolina is a state-land state, not a federal (public-domain) state. There are no federal General Land Office records here. Original title passed from the Lords Proprietors, then from the Crown, and after the Revolution from the State of South Carolina by grant, so early grants are documented at the state level and later transfers at the county level.
• Counties: 46. The jurisdictions shifted repeatedly: proprietary counties (Berkeley, Craven, and Colleton) from 1682; Anglican parishes from 1706, which served as civil as well as religious units; seven judicial districts created by the Circuit Court Act of 1769; counties laid out within the districts in 1785; districts as the primary units from 1800; and, under the Constitution of 1868, the districts renamed counties. Allendale, formed in 1919, was the last county created.
• Nickname and mottoes: the Palmetto State; the state mottoes are Dum spiro spero ("While I breathe, I hope") and Animis opibusque parati ("Prepared in mind and resources").
• Where records live: deeds, probate, and court records are kept at the county — formerly district — level, while the records of the colonial government were centralized at Charleston. The state archives in Columbia holds land grants, plats, will transcripts, and much county material. Statewide civil registration is late: births and deaths from 1915, and marriage licenses from 1911.

Libraries and Archives

The state archives in Columbia holds the government records — land grants, wills, court, and military records — while the great manuscript collections of family papers, plantation journals, and church registers are divided between Columbia and Charleston. The principal South Carolina repositories include:

• South Carolina Department of Archives and History (Columbia) — the state's central repository, with land grants and plats from 1671, will transcripts, court and legislative records, military and Confederate records, tax lists, and microfilm of county records.
• South Carolina State Library (Columbia) — published genealogies, local histories, newspapers, obituary and cemetery indexes, and research guides to the state's records.
• South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina (Columbia) — one of the largest Southern manuscript collections in the country: family and plantation papers, church records, genealogical collections, broadsides, and the WPA local-history surveys.
• South Carolina Historical Society — the state's oldest private archive, founded in 1855, holding diaries, plantation, business, and church records, maps, and plats; its archives are housed in the Addlestone Library at the College of Charleston, and it publishes the South Carolina Historical Magazine.
• Charleston County Public Library, South Carolina Room and the Charleston Archive — city records, Lowcountry family histories, and Charleston research files.
• Charleston Library Society — founded in 1748, with deep colonial and early-Charleston holdings, rare books, pamphlets, and manuscripts.
• Richland Library (Columbia) — the Walker Local and Family History Center, city directories, newspapers, and the State Media Company photograph archive.
• Greenville County Library System, South Carolina Room — Upstate family histories, county records, and local newspapers.
• National Archives at Atlanta — the federal branch holding South Carolina's federal court and naturalization records, and microfilmed censuses, passenger lists, and military records.
• Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture (College of Charleston) — manuscripts, church and funeral-home records, photographs, and oral histories documenting African American life in Charleston and the Lowcountry.
• Jewish Heritage Collection (College of Charleston) — genealogies, congregational records, memoirs, photographs, and oral histories of Jewish South Carolinians from the colonial period onward.
• Huguenot Society of South Carolina — founded in 1885, with a research library and the published Transactions documenting the French Protestant families of Charleston and the Santee.
• The FamilySearch Library and its worldwide FamilySearch Centers hold extensive South Carolina microfilm and digital collections, and the county Clerk of Court, Register of Deeds, and Probate Judge hold the original records for their own counties.

Major Websites

These sites host digitized South Carolina records and indexes. Subscription sites are marked ($); several of them can be searched without charge at a FamilySearch Center or affiliate library.

• FamilySearch — free; the backbone finding aid, with the FamilySearch Wiki, catalog, and large digitized collections of South Carolina vital, probate, land, church, military, and Freedmen's Bureau records.
• SCDAH Online Records Index — free; the state archives' searchable index and images, covering will transcripts (1782–1855), plats for state land grants (1784–1868), colonial plats, Confederate pension applications, Revolutionary War audited accounts, legislative papers, criminal court records (1769–1891), grand jury presentments, and the 1869 militia enrollments.
• Ancestry ($) — extensive South Carolina probate, death, marriage, naturalization, land-warrant, and census-substitute collections.
• MyHeritage ($) — South Carolina death records, newspapers, and immigration collections.
• Findmypast ($) — South Carolina will transcripts (1782–1866) and the index to plats for state land grants (1784–1868).
• Fold3 ($) — military records, including Revolutionary and Confederate service records and Freedmen's Bureau material.
• Historical Newspapers of South Carolina — free; full-text searchable newspapers from across the state, hosted by the University of South Carolina Libraries.
• University of South Carolina Digital Collections — free; digitized manuscripts, plantation journals, Bible records, church registers, and Civil War material.
• Lowcountry Digital Library — free; digitized Lowcountry archival collections from the College of Charleston, the South Carolina Historical Society, the Avery Research Center, and partner institutions.
• South Carolina Digital Library — free; a statewide aggregator of digitized collections from the state's libraries, archives, and museums.
• Lowcountry Africana — free; records documenting African American family and cultural heritage in the historic rice-growing regions of South Carolina, Georgia, and northeastern Florida.
• Chronicling America — free; the Library of Congress newspaper archive, including many South Carolina titles.
• Internet Archive and HathiTrust — free; digitized South Carolina statutes, county and church histories, and published record abstracts.
• Find a Grave and BillionGraves — free; cemetery listings, photographs, and transcriptions.

Law and Government

South Carolina's statutes and legislative papers are genealogical sources in their own right: the General Assembly created parishes, districts, and counties, granted individual divorces and pensions, confirmed land titles, and acted on petitions that name the petitioners. The full printed statute set has been digitized and is free to read.

• The Statutes at Large of South Carolina (ten volumes, 1836–1841) — edited by Thomas Cooper and David J. McCord, covering acts and constitutional documents from 1682 to 1838; free on the Internet Archive and cataloged on HathiTrust.
• Volume 5 — the acts from 1786 to 1814, the essential volume for the early state period, including the land-grant legislation; free on the Internet Archive.
• Volume 7 — the acts relating to Charleston, the courts, slavery, and the rivers; the most useful single volume for understanding which body created which records; free on the Internet Archive.
• Joseph Brevard's Alphabetical Digest of the Public Statute Law of South Carolina (three volumes, 1814) and John F. Grimke's Public Laws of the State of South-Carolina (1790) are earlier compilations, both free on the Internet Archive.
• The FamilySearch South Carolina Law and Legislation guide is free and identifies the individual statute volumes, session laws, and digitized editions by date range.
• The colonial Journals of the Commons House of Assembly and the records of the proprietary and royal governments are at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, whose legislative papers (1782–1866) — bills, petitions, and committee reports — are indexed free in the Online Records Index.
• The current South Carolina Code of Laws is published free by the legislature at the South Carolina State House.

Vital Records (Birth, Marriage, Death)

Statewide civil registration came late in South Carolina, so before the twentieth century researchers depend on church registers, probate files, tombstones, and newspapers. A few cities registered earlier than the state did, and knowing those exceptions — and the access rules — is the key to this section.

• Births (statewide, from January 1, 1915): earlier city registration survives, most importantly Charleston, which recorded births from 1877; Florence and Newberry also began before the statewide law. Birth records are closed for 100 years, after which they transfer to the state archives.
• Deaths (statewide, from January 1, 1915): Charleston kept death records from 1821, decades ahead of the state. Death records are closed for 50 years, after which they become public and are available through the state archives.
• Marriages (statewide licenses required from July 1, 1911): licenses issued between 1911 and July 1950 are held by the county Probate Judge, and copies from July 1950 forward are also filed with the state. A handful of counties recorded marriages earlier, and marriage settlements were recorded in the equity courts. Marriage records are closed for 50 years.
• Divorce: South Carolina had no legal divorce for most of its history. Divorce was available briefly during Reconstruction and then prohibited again until 1949; statewide divorce reports begin in 1962. Earlier separations appear as legislative petitions or as equity-court suits.
• Ordering records: recent certificates are issued by the South Carolina Department of Public Health, Vital Records; a fee applies and access is limited to the person named on the record and close family or their legal representatives.

Indexes to search first. Use these to identify a certificate before ordering, or to find the record itself:

• Deaths: South Carolina Deaths, 1915–1965 — free, with index and images, on FamilySearch; South Carolina Death Records, 1821–1969 ($), which includes the early Charleston city deaths; and South Carolina Deaths, 1915–1943 ($) on MyHeritage. The state's own death indexes for genealogy are free, as is the death index in the SCDAH Online Records Index. Earlier deaths are indexed free in South Carolina Deaths and Burials, 1816–1990.
• Marriages: South Carolina Marriages, 1709–1913 — a free index on FamilySearch; South Carolina County Marriage Records, 1907–2000 ($), with index and images; and the South Carolina Compiled Marriage Index, 1641–1965 ($).
• Births: South Carolina Delayed Birth Certificates, 1766–1900 — free on FamilySearch, and also on Ancestry ($). These delayed certificates were filed from 1939 by people born before registration began, and they often name parents and birthplaces. See also South Carolina Births, 1915–1917 ($) and the free index in South Carolina Births and Christenings, 1681–1935.

History and Timeline of Major Events

Key dates that shaped South Carolina's jurisdictions and records:

• 1521–1526 — Spanish expeditions reach the coast; the short-lived colony of San Miguel de Gualdape is founded and abandoned.
• 1562 — French Huguenots under Jean Ribault build Charlesfort on present-day Parris Island; it too is abandoned.
• 1663 and 1665 — Charles II grants the Carolina charters to the eight Lords Proprietors.
• 1670 — The first permanent English settlement is planted at Albemarle Point on the Ashley River.
• 1680 — Charles Town relocates to the present Charleston peninsula.
• 1682 — The Proprietors create the counties of Berkeley, Craven, and Colleton.
• 1680s–1700s — Huguenot, Barbadian, and Scottish settlers arrive; the colony's economy turns to rice and, later, indigo.
• 1706 — The Church Act establishes the Church of England and creates parishes that serve as both religious and civil units.
• 1712 — North Carolina and South Carolina are formally separated.
• 1715–1717 — The Yamasee War devastates the frontier and reshapes Native American settlement.
• 1719 — The colonists overthrow proprietary rule.
• 1729 — South Carolina becomes a royal colony; new procedures for warrants, plats, and grants begin.
• 1730s — The township scheme lays out planned inland settlements: Purrysburg, Orangeburg, Amelia, Saxe-Gotha, Williamsburg, Queensborough, Kingston, Fredericksburg, and New Windsor.
• 1740s–1760s — Scots-Irish and German settlers pour into the backcountry down the Great Wagon Road.
• 1759–1761 — The Cherokee War; the resulting treaty opens the Upcountry to settlement.
• 1761 — The Bounty Act offers land and support to Protestant immigrants, producing new townships.
• 1769 — The Circuit Court Act creates seven judicial districts — Charleston, Beaufort, Georgetown, Orangeburg, Ninety Six, Camden, and Cheraws — each with its own courts and clerk.
• 1776–1783 — The Revolution, in which South Carolina is the most fought-over state; Charleston falls in May 1780, and the campaigns include Kings Mountain, Cowpens, Camden, and Eutaw Springs.
• 1785 — Counties are laid out within the districts to hold local courts; most never became fully functional.
• 1786 and 1790 — The capital is moved to Columbia; the legislature first meets there in 1790.
• May 23, 1788 — South Carolina ratifies the U.S. Constitution as the eighth state.
• 1800 — Districts become the primary units of local government and record-keeping.
• 1822 — The Denmark Vesey conspiracy scare in Charleston tightens restrictions on free people of color.
• December 20, 1860 — South Carolina secedes, the first state to do so.
• 1861 — The Civil War opens with the bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor.
• February 1865 — Columbia burns during Sherman's march. Because several districts had sent their records to the capital for safekeeping, this is the single greatest records-loss event in the state's history.
• 1868 — A new constitution renames the districts as counties and creates a Probate Court in each; South Carolina is readmitted to the Union.
• 1895 — A new constitution restructures state and local government.
• 1911 and 1915 — Statewide marriage licenses are required (1911); statewide birth and death registration begins (1915).
• 1910s–1920s — The boll weevil and the Great Migration reshape the state's population and send many families north.
• 1919 — Allendale, the last of the 46 counties, is created.
• Records losses — besides the burning of Columbia, courthouse fires destroyed records in several counties, among them Abbeville in the 1870s. Where county deeds and wills are lost, the state land grants and plats at the archives are often the only surviving proof of ownership.

Census Records and Substitutes

Federal censuses were taken every ten years from 1790 through 1950, and South Carolina appears in all of them, though the 1890 federal census was almost entirely destroyed and the 1800 schedule for Richland District is missing. They are free on FamilySearch and are also searchable on Ancestry ($) and MyHeritage ($). The 1850 and 1860 slave schedules are essential for African American research.

State censuses were taken in 1829, 1839, 1849, 1859, 1869, and 1875, but they survive only in fragments — and where they survive they are extremely valuable, particularly the 1869 enumeration, which is the first to name formerly enslaved people. What survives varies sharply by year:

• 1829: only the returns for Fairfield and Laurens districts survive.
• 1839: only the returns for Kershaw and Chesterfield districts survive.
• 1849: taken, but no substantial population returns are known to survive.
• 1859: taken, but likewise essentially lost.
• 1869: the most useful of the series. Returns are complete except for Clarendon, Oconee, and Spartanburg counties, and this Reconstruction-era enumeration names formerly enslaved people who appear in no earlier record by name.
• 1875: complete returns survive for Clarendon, Newberry, and Marlboro counties, with partial returns for Abbeville, Beaufort, Fairfield, Lancaster, and Sumter.

The surviving schedules are free on FamilySearch in South Carolina State and Territorial Censuses, and the originals are at the state archives.

Census substitutes. Where censuses are missing, the standard replacements are tax lists — above all the 1786–1787 tax returns — along with city directories (Charleston's begin in the 1780s), jury lists, the free black capitation tax books, the 1868 voter registrations, the 1869 militia enrollments, and the South Carolina County Voter Registration Records, 1882–1895, free on FamilySearch. A compiled index to many of these is the South Carolina Compiled Census and Census Substitutes Index, 1790–1890 ($).

Church Records

Because civil registration begins only in 1915, church registers are the single most important substitute for births, marriages, and deaths across the colonial and antebellum periods. The colonial Anglican parishes were civil as well as religious units, so their registers often carry the weight of public records — and they frequently survive where county records do not.

• Anglican and Episcopal: the Church of England was established by the Church Act of 1706, and twenty-five parishes were created before the Revolution. Registers survive for only about a dozen of them, but every surviving register has been published, in book form or in the South Carolina Historical Magazine. Diocesan material is held by the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina and its Dalcho Historical Society.
• Baptist: the state's largest denomination. The South Carolina Baptist Historical Collection at Furman University holds church minutes, membership rolls, and association records for Baptist congregations across the state — see the Furman Special Collections guide. Many are indexed in U.S. Southern Baptist Church Records, 1750–1899 ($).
• Methodist: conference records, membership lists, and the obituary index to the Southern Christian Advocate — a rich and underused death source — are held by the South Carolina Conference United Methodist Archives at the Sandor Teszler Library, Wofford College.
• Presbyterian: the church of the Scots-Irish backcountry. Session minutes and congregational records are held by the Presbyterian Historical Society and, for the Associate Reformed Presbyterian church, at Erskine College.
• Lutheran and German Reformed: the churches of the German and Swiss settlers of Orangeburg, Saxe-Gotha, and the Dutch Fork; records are concentrated at the Lutheran seminary archives in Columbia and in published congregational histories.
• French Huguenot: the registers of the Charleston and Santee congregations are published in the Transactions of the Huguenot Society of South Carolina.
• Quaker, Congregational, Roman Catholic, and Jewish: Quaker monthly-meeting records survive from the mid-1700s; the Independent or Circular Congregational Church of Charleston kept early registers; the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charleston holds parish registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials in its archives; and Charleston's Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, organized in 1749, is one of the oldest Jewish congregations in the country, with related material in the Jewish Heritage Collection.

Original registers and microfilm are concentrated at the South Caroliniana Library and the South Carolina Historical Society, and thousands of congregational registers can be located through the FamilySearch Catalog by county and town. The WPA Inventory of Church Archives, compiled in the late 1930s, is a useful survey of what once existed and where it went.

Court Records

South Carolina's courts recorded far more than lawsuits: land, estates, guardianships, debts, apprenticeships, manumissions, and citizenship all passed through them. Because jurisdiction moved from Charleston outward to the districts and then to the counties, knowing which court sat when is the key to finding a record.

• The colonial period: government was centralized at Charleston, where the Grand Council — later His Majesty's Council — sat as the general court and as courts of chancery, common pleas, general sessions, admiralty, and appeals. The governor, acting as "ordinary," and the colony's secretary handled probate.
• The Circuit Court Act of 1769 created seven judicial districts, each with a courthouse and clerk; the circuit courts began sitting about 1772. Pinckney and Washington districts were added in 1791.
• Court of Common Pleas — the civil court, whose records cover debt, contract, and land disputes; its judgment rolls often contain detailed family information.
• Court of General Sessions — the criminal court, keeping indictments, trial papers, and grand jury presentments.
• Court of Equity (Chancery) — established on circuit in the 1790s; equity records include marriage settlements, trusts, partitions of estates among heirs, and disputes over wills, and they are among the most genealogically informative records in the state.
• Court of Ordinary — probate at the district level, replaced under the Constitution of 1868 by a county Probate Court, which remains the custodian of wills and estates.
• Custody today: the county Clerk of Court holds the common pleas and general sessions records, and the Probate Judge holds estate and, from 1911, marriage records.
• Federal courts: the records of the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, including case files and naturalizations, are held by the National Archives at Atlanta.

Criminal court records for 1769–1891 and grand jury presentments for 1783–1877 are indexed and imaged free in the SCDAH Online Records Index, and county sheriff records for 1865–1966 are on Ancestry ($).

Ethnic/Minority Records

South Carolina had a Black majority for much of its history and drew settlers from Barbados, France, Ulster, the German states, and Switzerland. Knowing where a group settled points directly to the records most likely to document a family.

• African Americans. The essential sources are the South Carolina Freedmen's Bureau Field Office Records, 1865–1872, free on FamilySearch; the Freedman's Savings Bank records; the 1867–1868 voter registrations; the 1869 state census and militia enrollments; estate inventories and bills of sale, which name enslaved people individually; the federal slave schedules of 1850 and 1860; and the Secretary of State Slave Mortgage Records, 1734–1780, also free. Lowcountry Africana is free and focused on the rice-growing Lowcountry, and the Avery Research Center holds church, funeral-home, and family papers. The Gullah Geechee culture of the Sea Islands and coastal parishes is documented in oral histories and community records rather than in civil registers.
• Indigenous peoples. The Catawba, Cherokee, Yamasee, Congaree, Edisto, Pee Dee, Santee, Waccamaw, and Wateree, among others, occupied the region before and during settlement. The Catawba Indian Nation, with lands in York County, is the only federally recognized tribe in the state; its recognition was restored in 1993. Several other communities hold state recognition. Cherokee researchers use the Eastern Cherokee applications and later rolls held by the National Archives, and the Thomas J. Blumer Catawba research collection is at the Native American Studies Center of the University of South Carolina Lancaster. The FamilySearch guide to the Indigenous peoples of South Carolina is free and lists the surviving record sets.
• French Huguenots. Refugees who settled Charleston and the Santee from the 1680s; their descendants are documented by the Huguenot Society of South Carolina and in the published parish registers.
• Scots-Irish. They settled the backcountry and the Waxhaws, most arriving overland down the Great Wagon Road; Presbyterian session records and land grants are the primary sources. See also the Directory of Scots in the Carolinas, 1680–1830 ($).
• Germans and Swiss. Settlers of Orangeburg, Saxe-Gotha, Purrysburg, New Windsor, and the Dutch Fork, many arriving under the township and bounty schemes; Lutheran and Reformed registers and the bounty land grants document them.
• Jewish South Carolinians. Charleston had one of the largest and oldest Jewish communities in early America, centered on Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim (1749). The Jewish Heritage Collection at the College of Charleston holds congregational records, genealogies, cemetery surveys, and oral histories.
• Barbadian and West Indian families. Many of the founding Lowcountry planter families came by way of Barbados; their origins are traced in the manuscript collections of the South Carolina Historical Society and in the colonial land warrants.

Immigration and Naturalization

Charleston was one of colonial America's great ports — and the principal North American port of entry for enslaved Africans, with a very large share of those brought to British North America arriving through the Charleston area, many by way of the quarantine station on Sullivan's Island. Georgetown and Beaufort were secondary ports. Free immigration to the colony was actively subsidized, which is good news for researchers: the schemes that paid people to come generated lists of who came.

• Colonial immigration: under the proprietary and royal headright system a settler received land in proportion to the number of people he brought, so arrivals are recorded in council journals, land warrants, and petitions. The township scheme of the 1730s and the Bounty Act of 1761 paid the passage of Protestant immigrants and recorded them by name and ship. See A Compilation of the Original Lists of Protestant Immigrants to South Carolina, 1763–1773 ($).
• Passenger arrivals: federal customs lists survive for Charleston from 1820, with gaps, and continue into the twentieth century; the later series is indexed in South Carolina Arriving Passenger and Crew Lists, 1906–1962 ($). The originals are held by the National Archives, and the FamilySearch emigration and immigration guide is free and identifies the microfilm series by port and date.
• Naturalization before 1906: any court of record could naturalize — state, district, county, or federal — so the records are scattered and all three levels must be checked. See South Carolina Naturalizations, 1783–1850 ($).
• Naturalization after 1906: the process was federalized and standardized. The main finding aids are South Carolina Naturalization Records, 1868–1991 ($) and the free South Carolina Naturalization Records, 1885–1955 on FamilySearch. The National Archives at Atlanta holds the federal naturalizations for the District of South Carolina.

Land Records

As a state-land state, South Carolina granted its own land rather than passing it through the federal government, so there are no General Land Office records. This matters more here than in most states: because so many district and county record books burned in 1865, the state land series in Columbia is frequently the only surviving proof that a family held land at all. The process ran warrant → plat (survey) → grant, and after 1731 landholders also filed memorials of their titles.

How title passed.

• Proprietary period (1670–1719): land was granted by headright — a set acreage for each person brought into the colony, including family members, servants, and the enslaved — and also sold outright. A settler petitioned the Grand Council for a warrant, a deputy surveyor made the plat, and the grant was recorded by the Register of the Province. The warrants for land are indexed on Ancestry for 1672–1679 ($), 1680–1692 ($), and 1692–1711 ($).
• Royal period (1719–1775): the Crown reorganized the system, and plats and grants are nearly complete from 1731. These are the Colonial Plats, indexed and imaged free in the SCDAH Online Records Index.
• Memorials (1731–1775): from 1731 holders of land were required to file a memorial with the auditor general stating the parish, location, acreage, adjoining owners, and the chain of title by which they held it. Because a memorial recites how the land was acquired — by grant, purchase, marriage, or inheritance — it is one of the best genealogical records the colony produced. The originals are at the state archives, and the standard published abstracts are Katie-Prince Ward Esker's South Carolina Memorials.
• State grants (1784–1868): after the Revolution the state sold its vacant land, payable in cash or in the military indents issued to veterans. Each district had a Commissioner of Locations who issued the warrant; a deputy surveyor made the plat; and the survey passed to the Secretary of State, who issued the grant. Several hundred no-cost bounty grants went to Continental veterans and are marked "Bounty" on the recorded plat. The Plats for State Land Grants, 1784–1868 are searchable free by name, date, and location in the SCDAH Online Records Index — the single most valuable resource for the burned counties — and are also indexed on Findmypast ($).
• Deeds: after the Revolution, recording moved to the local level. In Charleston, Beaufort, and Georgetown the recording officer is the Register of Mesne Conveyance (RMC); elsewhere it is the Clerk of Court. Deeds recorded before 1785 are generally found in the Charleston (colonial) series at the state archives.

The townships and settlement schemes. Much of the interior was opened through planned settlements, and knowing which township an ancestor's land fell in tells you which records to search and which ethnic community he belonged to.

• Purrysburg (1732): Swiss settlers under Jean Pierre Purry, on the Savannah River in present Jasper County.
• Orangeburg (1730s): German and Swiss settlers on the North Edisto, in present Orangeburg County.
• Amelia (1730s): on the Santee and Congaree, in present Calhoun County.
• Saxe-Gotha (1730s): Germans in the Congaree region and the Dutch Fork, in present Lexington County — the heart of German settlement in the colony.
• Williamsburg (1730s): Scots-Irish Presbyterians on the Black River, in present Williamsburg County.
• Queensborough (1730s): on the Pee Dee, in present Marion and Marlboro counties.
• Kingston (1730s): on the Waccamaw, in present Horry County.
• Fredericksburg (1730s): on the Wateree near Camden, in present Kershaw County.
• New Windsor (1730s): Swiss and German settlers on the Savannah, near present Aiken County.
• The Bounty Act townships (1760s): Boonesborough and Belfast, settled largely by Scots-Irish; Londonborough, settled by Germans; and Hillsborough on Long Cane Creek, settled by French Huguenots — all in the Ninety Six District, in the present Abbeville, Greenwood, McCormick, and Laurens area.

Online, the SCDAH Online Records Index is the free starting point for grants, plats, and memorials, and FamilySearch Full-Text Search makes many unindexed deeds and land papers searchable by every name they contain, including grantors, grantees, witnesses, and adjoining neighbors — which is often how a family is placed when the deed books themselves are gone.

Military Records

South Carolina fought in every American conflict and was the most heavily contested state of the Revolution, with more engagements on its soil than any other. Because federal records for the early wars are thin, the state's own claim, pension, and service files often carry the evidence.

• Colonial and Indian wars: scattered militia and service records for the Yamasee War (1715–1717) and the Cherokee War (1759–1761) survive at the state archives and in the council journals.
• Revolution: the essential source is the Accounts Audited of Claims Growing Out of the Revolution in South Carolina — claims submitted to the treasury for military service, supplies, and losses — together with the stub books of indented certificates recording what was paid. Both are digitized and searchable free in the SCDAH Online Records Index, and they frequently document men who appear in no federal record. Bobby Gilmer Moss's Roster of South Carolina Patriots in the American Revolution is on Ancestry ($); federal pension and bounty-land files are free on FamilySearch and on Fold3 ($).
• War of 1812 and the Mexican War: militia and service records are held at the state archives and indexed in the federal compiled service records.
• Civil War: South Carolina Civil War Service Records of Confederate Soldiers, 1861–1865 is free on FamilySearch. Confederate pension applications from 1919 onward — including a separate series for African American men who served as laborers, cooks, and body servants — are digitized free in the SCDAH Online Records Index. The South Carolina Confederate Home Records, 1909–1958 are also free on FamilySearch and on Ancestry ($).
• The 1869 militia enrollments list men aged 18 to 45 by county, including African American men, and are one of the best statewide name lists of the Reconstruction era; they are free in the SCDAH Online Records Index.
• Spanish-American War, World War I, and later: service records and the World War I draft registration cards are indexed free on FamilySearch and on Ancestry ($).

Probate Records

Probate — wills, administrations of intestate estates, inventories, bonds, and guardianships of minors — is among the richest sources for family relationships in South Carolina, and the inventories and appraisements of antebellum estates routinely name enslaved people, often in family groups. The key dividing lines are 1785 and 1868.

• Before 1785: probate was handled centrally at Charleston, by the colony's secretary and by the governor acting as ordinary. Most colonial wills were recorded there, and the published transcript volumes of the Charleston will books are the standard finding aid.
• 1785–1868: the district Court of Ordinary proved wills, granted administrations, and appointed guardians. The state archives' Will Transcripts, 1782–1855 are digitized and indexed free in the Online Records Index — note that these cover twenty-one counties, and that the Charleston County and colonial will transcripts are not part of that index and must be searched separately.
• From 1868: the county Probate Court, created by the new constitution, took over and remains the custodian of wills and estate files. The estate file — petition, will or letters of administration, bond, inventory, and final accounting — usually names the widow, the children, and the sons-in-law.

Online, the bound volumes are free on FamilySearch as South Carolina Probate Records, Bound Volumes, 1671–1977, and the loose papers — often the more informative of the two — as South Carolina Probate Records, Files and Loose Papers, 1732–1964. South Carolina Wills and Probate Records, 1670–1980 ($) is name-searchable across most counties, and Indexes to the County Wills of South Carolina ($) reproduces the WPA index volumes. FamilySearch Full-Text Search makes many unindexed wills and estate papers searchable by every name they contain.

Tax Records

Tax lists place a family in a specific district and year, and in a state with late vital registration, destroyed censuses, and burned courthouses they do a great deal of the work that other records cannot. Read several consecutive years together and they will show when a young man came of age, when a household moved, and when a man died and his estate passed to his heirs.

• The 1786–1787 tax returns are the most nearly statewide early name list the state produced and the standard substitute for the missing early censuses; they are held at the state archives and widely published in abstract.
• Colonial and state tax acts and returns: scattered returns survive from the colonial period onward at the state archives, and the tax acts themselves — which set out who was taxed and at what rate — are printed in the Statutes at Large.
• Free black capitation tax books: free people of color in Charleston paid an annual head tax, and the surviving books record name, residence, age, occupation, and property. They are among the very few records that document free Black families year by year, and are free on FamilySearch as South Carolina, Charleston, Free Negro Capitation Books, 1811–1860.
• District and county tax duplicates and assessment rolls: held by the county Auditor and Treasurer, with microfilm at the state archives; many have been published in abstract by local societies.
• Federal IRS assessment lists (1862–1874): the Civil War–era internal-revenue lists cover income, licenses, and luxury goods, and are indexed on Ancestry ($), with the originals at the National Archives.