South Carolina Land Records

Latest update: 7 March 2023

According to The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy : "Perhaps no category of records is more important to the genealogist than those relating to land.... As might be expected, the systems of land granting and land tenure in these jurisdictions varied widely, and each must be studied separately." South Carolina land records are a bit complicated. South Carolina land records created before the American Revolution may refer to the counties of Colleton, Craven, Berkeley, and Granville; these were nonfunctioning but useful as geographical locators. Beaufort District was created out of Granville County. 

Deeds and mortgages were recorded only at Charleston until 1769–1772; and until 1785, such records from local courthouses continued to be sent to and stored in Charleston. Pre-1719 records are at the state archive in Columbia. 

• Charles H. Lesser, South Carolina Begins: The Records of a Proprietary Colony, 1663–1721 (Columbia: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 1995). 
• Silas Emmett Lucas, Jr., An Index to Deeds of the Province and State of South Carolina 1719–1785 and Charleston District 1785–1800 (Easley, S.C.: Southern Historical Press, 1977), 
• Clara A. Langley, South Carolina Deed Abstracts, 1719–1772, 4 vols. (Spartanburg, S.C.: 1983).

From 1785 to 1799, there were first seven and then nine “old” districts, where conveyances were stored. About 1799 these large districts were abolished and conveyances were recorded and stored at twenty-four small “new” districts. (These districts have been called counties since 1868.)  

• Michael E. Stauffer, County Formation in South Carolina (Columbia: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 1994).

The need, until about 1769–72, to go to Charleston to record conveyances, the turmoil of the revolution from 1775 to 1783, and the loss of many “old” district records means South Carolina deeds created before 1800 are very incomplete. South Carolina passed a bounty-land act and established a small military reserve. 

•  “Bounty Grants to Revolutionary Soldiers,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 7 (1906): 173–78, 217–24.

A unique land source is the state’s Reconstruction attempt to buy land for black freedmen. Some records exist showing whites selling to the project and blacks buying. 

• Carol K. Rothrock, The Promised Land; The History of the South Carolina Land Commission, 1869–1890 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1969). 
• “Granting of Land in Colonial South Carolina,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 77 (1976): 208–12. 
• Robert K. Ackerman, South Carolina Colonial Land Policies (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1977); 
• David A. Means, “The Recording of Land Titles in South Carolina . . . ,” South Carolina Law Quarterly 10 (1957–58): 346–419 
• South Carolina Archives Summary Guide
• Robert L. Meriwether, The Expansion of South Carolina 1729–1765 (Kingsport, Tenn.: Southern Publishers, 1940).