A Genealogists' Tool Kit : Military and Other Records From the Revolutionary War In the BDC Research Room

Earlier this month I wrote about the "Revolutionary Roots" programs in the BCL's America 250 project. 

Let's say that you have identified ancestors in your family tree who may have served in a military capacity during the conflict as Americans and the British were determining the future government of the English colonies in North America. Establishing your blood ties to a Revolutionary War soldier in particular can be thrilling, time-consuming, and once documents, may afford you the opportunity to join a heritage society. 

Does the BDC have materials to help you document your ancestor's service and life? Yes, we do! 

General Types of Military Records

It may help to know a little about the various types of military service-related records that one finds on databases or in library collections. Military records provide a variety of information about an individual and could include their birthplace, age at enlistment, occupation, and names of immediate family members. Some types of military records include:

• Service records: Service records for militia, volunteer, or regular forces document that an individual served in the military and can provide your ancestor’s unit or organization.
• Draft, Conscription, or Selective Service Records: Since 1863, the federal government has registered millions of men who may have been eligible for military service. Enrollment and Draft information include name residence, age, occupation, marital status, birthplace, physical description, and other information.
• Bounty Land Warrants: The federal government provided bounty land for those who served in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and Indian wars between 1790 and 1855.
• Pension Records: The federal government and some state governments granted pensions or bounty land to officers, disabled veterans, needy veterans, widows or orphans of veterans, and veterans who served a certain length of time. Pension records usually contain more genealogical information than service records. However, not every veteran received or applied for a pension.

Although subscription databases such as Ancestry Library Edition and Fold 3 have a lot of materials posted online to help you dig deeper into your ancestral roots, these massive databases do not have digital surrogates of every resource ever created and/or published. Sometimes one has to go analog - as in visiting archives or visiting libraries to find appropriate printed or microfilmed materials to use in your research. 

Printed Materials in the Research Room

Here are a few printed materials in the BDC that may help you discover more about your Patriot or Loyalist ancestors. 

DAR Patriot Index: Centennial Edition by the Daughters of the American Revolution (National Society of the DAR Centennial Administration, c1994). Covers Patriots whose service has been established through DAR membership applications submitted between October 1890 and 11 October 1990. Part 1: Surnames beginning with A - F; Part 2: Surnames beginning with G - O; and Part 3: Surnames beginning with P - Z.  

Revolutionary War Bounty Land Grants Awarded by State Governments by Lloyd DeWitt Bockstruck (Genealogical Publishing, 1996). "A land bounty is a grant of land from a government as a reward to pay citizens for the risks and hardships they endured in the service of their country, usually in a military related capacity." This volume lists bounty land grants in Connecticut, Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia, and "Virginia-Indiana."- introduction

Revolutionary War Pensions Awarded by State Governments, 1775 – 1874, the General and Federal governments prior to 1814, and by Private Acts of Congress to 1905 by Lloyd de Witt Bockstruck (Genealogical Publishing, [2011]). More than 16,500 pensioners are featured in this work compiled in an attempt to identify and recreate the Revolutionary War pension files generated prior to the disastrous fire in the War Department on 8 November 1800, which destroyed nearly a quarter-century of records.

Stub Entries to Indents issued in payments of Claims against South Carolina growing out of the Revolution (The Historical Commission of South Carolina, 1910-1939).

South Carolina Loyalists in the American Revolution by Robert Lambert (University of South Carolina Press, 1987).

African-American Patriots in the Southern Campaign of the American Revolution by Bobby G. Moss and Michael C. Scoggins (Scotia-Hibernia Press, 2004).

African-American Loyalists in the Southern Campaign of the American Revolution by Bobby G. Moss and Michael C. Scoggins (Scotia-Hibernia Press, 2005).

African American and American Indian Patriots of the Revolutionary War (National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, 2001).  Please note: This is also available free as a downloadable PDF file. Online the title is "Forgotten Patriots: African American and American Indian Patriots of the Revolutionary War." Because the PDF file is 874 pages, it can take some time for the file to download. 

South Carolinians in the Revolution by Sara Ervin ([S.l.]: Genealogical Publishing, 1965). 

Anecdotes of the Revolutionary War in America with Sketches of Character of Persons the Most Distinguished, in the Southern States, for Civil and Military Services by Alexander Garden (A.E. Miller, 1822). 

South Carolina in the American Revolution: A Source Guide for Genealogists and Historians by Eric G. Grundset for the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution. (National Society Daughters of the American Revolution, 2013).

Roster of South Carolina Patriots in the American Revolution by Bobby Moss (Genealogical Publishing, 1985).

Traditions and Reminiscences, Chiefly of the American Revolution in the South : including biographical sketches, incidents, and anecdotes, few of which have been published, particularly of residents in the upper country by Joseph Johnson (Walker and James,1851). 

We may have even more. Contact us to discuss your research problem. 

Microfilmed Materials in the Research Room

Beaufort is a "Burned County": Almost all of our pre-Civil War records were destroyed in 1865. Given this fact, genealogical research can be more challenging here. Through the years, the BDC purchased some SC Department of Archives and History records on microfilm to help fill the historical gap. Among the most important series that can help you identify ancestors who may have served during the American Revolution are:

South Carolina Tax Returns, 1783-1800. (2 rolls) This series supplies information about landowners and size of holdings that census records and deed books leave out for the period covered. A printed guide to these records is available in our Research Room. 

Records of the South Carolina Treasury, 1775-1780. (6 rolls) This office was critical to the operation of the newly independent colony and funding of the war effort. The records reflect the increased responsibilities of the revolutionary treasury as the expenses of the war and the problems of supplying the new government grew. They hold a wealth of information on the financial management of the colony during this period and detail military expenditures. A printed guide to these records is available in our Research Room.

Accounts Audited Growing Out of the Revolution in South Carolina. (165 rolls)

This is a fundamental genealogical and historical resource for information regarding the Revolutionary War era. A printed guide to these records is available in our Research Room. You can search series S108092 online via the Online Records Index at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History (SCDAH).  

South Carolina Will Transcripts, 1782-1868. (31 rolls) This is a fundamental genealogical and historical resource for the period covered. A printed guide to these records is available in our Research Room. You can search series L10125 online via the Online Records Index at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History. 

South Carolina State Plats, Charleston Series, 1784-1860; Columbia Series, 1796-1868. (30 rolls) These plats are an essential source for genealogy and local history as well as a gold mine of primary documentation for social, cultural, and economic historical studies. A printed guide to these records is available in our Research Room. You can search these series online via the Online Records Index at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History.

Memorials of the 17th and 18th Century South Carolina Land Titles. (7 rolls)

We have a volume of memorials to quitrents in printed form in the Research Room though this series on microfilm is far more extensive than the printed volume available. In certain cases, this is the only surviving record of a particular transaction, containing Proprietary land grants, certificates of admeasurements, wills, leases, and releases. A printed guide to the Memorials microfilmed series is available in our Research Room. The Memorials on microfilm is partially indexed online via the Online Records Index at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History.

Tip: Using the guides to collections held at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History can be a bit daunting. Be sure to read "Searching the SCDAH Summary Guide and Online Catalog" by Katharine Slover on the Silver Crescent Standard: The Blog of the South Carolina Department of Archives and History (8 August 2019) for guidance. 

Tip: The information on the SCDAH's page about its Digital Collections and downloading the list of digitized genealogical related materials at the SCDAH may prove very helpful to you as well. 

Confused? Need a little more help than the online guides provide? You are always welcome to set up an appointment to sit down with BDC staff for a little one-on-one assistance with the Online Records Index or with the printed materials or microfilm we have in the BDC Research Room. Though we cannot do genealogical research for you, we can certainly guide you on how to use the genealogical materials we have and offer suggestions on other resources and cultural heritage organizations that might have additional sources of information more about your Revolutionary War era ancestors. 

Please e-mail bdc@bcgov.net or call us at 843-255-6468 to set a date and time for a mutually agreeable research appointment.  

Family Tree Magazine's "5 Clues You May Have Native American Ancestry"

In honor of Native American Heritage Month, I'd like to share a bit about the challenges of proving Native American ancestry. 

I cannot count the number of times that I have had a person call on the phone or show up in person to ask if the BDC staff could help them prove that there was a Cherokee brave or chief or princess in their family tree charts. The usual statement is something along the lines of "Grandma said that there was one," so of course it had to be true. Well, maybe it is true but a statement made by an elder or in a printed family history is not a proven fact backed up by genealogical evidence. It's not that Grandma is a liar. She's just relaying information that was probably relayed to her across the dining room table or perhaps at a family reunion picnic at some point in the past. Genealogical research, however, requires proof. 

Technically, meeting the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS) requires that a researcher gathers and weighs the evidence for his/her statement based upon: 

1. Reasonably exhaustive research.
2. Complete and accurate source citations.
3. Thorough analysis and correlation.
4. Resolution of conflicting evidence.
5. Soundly written conclusion based on the strongest evidence.

Diane Haddad offered this advice about how to check out family lore regarding Native American ancestors in your family tree in an article I received by email back in July 2023. She offers these "5 Clues [that] You May Have Native American Ancestry:"

1. An I or In designation appears in the "race" columns for an ancestor in the 1860 - 1950 Federal United States censuses.  

2. A proven blood relative is named on an Indian reservation census or a tribal enrollment. Ancestry.com has a Native American Research guide posted online to point you to databases that may help you. FamilySearch.org offers a Native American wiki article with plenty of links out to potential sources as well. Although the free US Indian Census Rolls, 1885 - 1940 on Access Genealogy are not indexed, you can read and scroll through a lot of agency and tribal lists. 

3. A genetic genealogy test indicates you have DNA markers associated with American Indian ancestry - though it is important to remember that only half of your parent's genes make it to you and through the generations the likelihood that a particular string of genes or individual gene will endure becomes less and less. She also makes the point that DNA alone will not make a tribal government recognize you as a member. Since the predominant ancestor I get told about is purportedly a Cherokee, here's what the Cherokee Nation requires of its applicants for tribal membership (2018).  

4. Family stories and newspapers tell of Native ancestry, and your ancestors lived in areas where they would have come into contact with Native Americans should be treated as clues for further research. [The underline is mine for emphasis since so many family historians tend to jump to the conclusion that this "proves" their Native American ancestry. It does not meet the criteria of the Genealogical Proof Standard alone.]

5. An ancestor lived in Indian Territory (a.k.a. the state of Oklahoma) by the year 1900. 

Let me conclude that because the Cherokee were more of an upstate tribe, they fall outside the BDC's geographical imperative.  We have a few sources related to the coastal Indian groups, more specifically about the Yamasee, but other Native American groups in what is now the Southeastern part of the United States falls outside our collection scope. BDC staff will always share the resources we have in the Research Room with our in-facility customers who make an appointment: bdc@bcgov.net ; 843-255-6468 and will do our best to guide you to sources at other locations or on the open internet to assist you with your research. We do not however have the resources to do this type of in depth research on your behalf. 

Reminder: The Library is closed on Friday, November 10 and Saturday, November 11 for the Veterans Day holiday. Regular hours will resume on Monday, November 13, 2023.

Genealogy Insider: Finding Enslaved Ancestors Using Enslaved.org

Today's post is totally pirated from Family Tree Magazine's Genealogy Insider e-newsletter that arrived in my in-box on 9 February 2023. I have made some minor formatting changes but the content is wholly from Genealogy Insider. When I searched the database on the place "Beaufort" I got 319 hits. This database - to which you can contribute - is another tool in the toolbox for African American ancestral research. -- Grace Cordial

We have more access to records documenting enslaved people than ever before, thanks in large part to digital initiatives like Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade (Enslaved.org). Kristina E. Poznan is the managing editor of Enslaved.org’s Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation, and she was kind enough to shed some light on this impressive resource.

Q: What is Enslaved.org? How does it differ from other sites?

Enslaved.org launched in 2019 and has been serving the needs of genealogists, students, and members of the public interested in named individuals who were part of the historical trade in enslaved people of African descent. Enslaved.org is a discovery hub that helps users to search and find information from a large and growing number of datasets and digital projects simultaneously. There is no fee and no log-in, just a free search tool.

Q: What sources are in Enslaved.org? How are they different from other sites?

The historians, archives, libraries, and museums that submit records about enslaved and emancipated people to Enslaved.org are generally gathering information from records more obscure than those found on other genealogical resource sites. These include probate inventories, runaway advertisements in newspapers, plantation registries, baptisms, coroners’ reports, and sale receipts. Getting information from these kinds of records is time-consuming, but they often provide a greater variety of details than a census.

Q: Why can I only sometimes see the original source?

Access to the original records is through the website of the project or institution that hosts the records. When they are available, we provide links to digitized sources, but in some cases the sources have not been digitized yet.

Q: Does data on Enslaved.org contain other kinds of information, too?

Yes, in addition to information about enslaved and emancipated peoples, Enslaved.org also contains some information about free people of color as well as some slave owners.

Q: How can I contribute information to Enslaved.org?

If you know of an archival record collection in which enslaved people are named and/or otherwise documented, let us know at enslaved.org@gmail.com and we will try to work with that institution to integrate it into our resources.

Kristina E. Poznan, PhD

Clinical Assistant Professor of History at the University of Maryland

Managing Editor of Enslaved.org’s Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation

Clearing Title for Heirs Property: Determining Heirs by Cassandra Knoppel

Latest update: 14 January 2022

Today's post was written by Cassandra Knoppel, the BDC's part-time assistant who joined the staff in late August 2021. Questions about heirs property come up fairly regularly in the Research Room. She agreed to investigate how we can better help people who are part owners of heirs property to clear or claim a joint holding. She has created an e-brochure that we will be able to hand-out that we can send you if you let us know that you would like one.  

Cassi tells you how to get started researching heirs property below. -- Grace Cordial 

Whether you have already obtained legal counsel or are preparing for that, developing an accurate family tree to determine heirs is a typical and crucial part of clearing title. 

Who can be an heir? If an individual dies without a will (legal term "intestate"), the state in which s/he died will designate certain people as legally entitled to the deceased’s property as “heirs”. 

South Carolina law states that heirs can be a spouse and biological or legally adopted children. If there is no spouse or children, the parents of the deceased can inherit. If the parents of the individual are deceased, the siblings can be heirs. 

• Please note: Other states may have different rules. The state where the property is located determines who and how the property is passed down to spouses, brothers and sisters, parents, aunts and uncles, children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, cousins, etc.  

• 
  

The Process

TIP: You may be dealing with a lot of people, living and dead, during your research. Be sure to keep accurate records and consider how you are going to keep the records organized for easy access during and after the research period is completed. 

Begin with the individual(s) who owned the property on the last recorded deed. 

Record how you are related to them and their date of death. 

Next, answer these questions: 

• Who was this person’s spouse? 
• Who were their children (biological or legally adopted)?  
• If there were no spouses or children, who were the parents or siblings? 
• Record the date of death for each of these individuals, then repeat the process down the line until reaching yourself and any other living heirs.  

To aid in this part, collect the sources that you and your family members may have on hand. This includes death certificates, death notices, and obituaries.  

What if you can’t find these sources of information? The library might be able to help by sharing some of our materials with you - inside the BDC Research Room or via our databases! For example: 

Beaufort County Library subscribes to the Ancestry Library Edition database. ALE includes Census Records (Up to 1940; 1950 releases 1 April 2022); Death Certificates; Coroner’s Records; Social Security Death Index and Marriage Certificates. Although ALE is big and includes more than 10,000 databases consisting of millions of records, it does not have digital images of every government record ever created. Sometimes one has to go to the courthouse or State Archives to get a relevant record. Sometimes the record you need does not exist or was created but destroyed by fire, flood, war, etc. 

•  

Within the Beaufort District Collection, we provide a local obituary index,  have some Beaufort County Coroner's Inquisition Records on microfilm, and can provide more hands-on help using Ancestry Library Edition than you are likely to get in the Branch Libraries.  Just be sure to make an appointment with us ahead of time to get the one-on-one assistance. Send an email to bdc@bcgov.net; or call 843-255-6468 during regular business hours.  

As you near the end of your research identifying other potential heirs, record the postal or mailing address of every living heir you discover. Once the action is filed in court, notices will need to be sent to every heir of the property.   

Finally, have an attorney review your findings to determine heirs. 

It is important to remember: 

• Birth dates are typically unnecessary in this process.  
• Exact dates of death are required. 
• Include people that you did not directly descend from. This means aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. as they and their heirs may have claims to the same property that you do. 
• Work your way up to the present starting with your ancestor on the deed. From that great-great-great... Grandmother/father, find their kids, then grandkids, then great-grandkids, etc. Don’t skip a single person! Each of the survivors may have a claim to the heirs property. 

As you may have gathered, heirs property is a complicated issue dating back more than 150 years into the Reconstruction Era when the newly emancipated enslaved bought small tracts of land or a small town lot to live on and feed their families. Some of the freedmen died without a will specifying who was to inherit the property upon the owner's death. Without a will naming who was to inherit the property, the state decided who the property belonged to according to state law at the time of the owner's death.

  

Our goal in the BDC is to provide customers with library resources and some general guidance on how to do the work necessary to help establish, dispute, verify or clear a claim on heirs property. We show and tell you how to do the work with library resources - but we do not, I repeat, BDC staff does not - research heirs or perform genealogical research on behalf of others. We are not attorneys and do not have licenses to give legal advice. With those caveats, if you would like some one-to-one assistance using Ancestry Library Edition, we will set up an appointment date and time for you to learn the basics with us. Contact us at least a few days in advance to make the necessary arrangements: 843-255-6468 or bdc@bcgov.net. 

An organization that knows far more about heirs property than we do is: 

Center for Heirs' Property Preservation

1535 Sam Rittenberg Boulevard, Ste. D.

Charleston, SC 29407

843-745-7054; Toll-Free 1-866-657-2676

http://www.heirsproperty.org

Please contact them for additional information regarding the process and the legal side of the matter. - Grace Cordial