Back in Time Today- with South Carolina Archives

We genealogy buffs are always looking for more to satisfy our seemingly unquenchable thirst for knowledge of the past. Let's all remember that our country will be celebrating the 222nd anniversary of the framing of the Constitution later this week. So, take a moment and step back into that time. Right now, my quest for my roots is on hold as I am starting my county wide tour of speaking on the Constitution to my local schools. With that said, I say the following article this morning and thought some of my readers would enjoy knowing more about some early South Carolina records.

It's good to see that not all records were destroyed during the "Recent Unpleasantness". I haven't had the time to go digging around for my roots at these online archives yet, but I shall.


The following article is from Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter and is copyright by Richard W. Eastman. It is re-published here with the permission of the author. Information about the newsletter is available at http://www.eogn.com.

South Carolina Archive Documents Online


The South Carolina Department of Archives and History has a rather simple, but impressive, web site. The site includes images of many orignal documents as well as indexes that allow the documents to be found quickly.

The documents available include:

Title Number of Items
Confederate Pension Applications 1919 - 1938 10,242 items
Criminal Journals 1769 - 1776 2,087 items
Index to Multiple Record Series ca. 1675 -1929 173,042 items
Legislative Papers 1782 - 1866 53,489 items
National Register of Historic Places 1,415 items
Plats for State Land Grants 1784 - 1868 51,809 items
School Insurance Photographs 1935 - 1952 2,662 items
Will Transcripts 1782 - 1855 11,059 items
TOTAL: 305,803 items

You can search the on-line index for documents by entering a personal name, geographic location, topic or a combination of these search factors. You may also specify a time span.

Images of records available are made possible by the support of an IMLS/LSTA grant administered by the South Carolina State Library.

You can access the South Carolina Archive Documents at http://www.archivesindex.sc.gov.