South Carolina State History - South Carolina is one of the original states of the United States of America. South Carolina became the eighth state to ratify the United States Constitution in 1788, and in 1790 moved its seat of government from Charleston to the new city of Columbia in the state's midlands. and the official state website is located at http://www.sc.gov/.
South Carolina currently has forty-six counties. Counties were established in the colonial period primarily for locating land grants, with most other governmental activities being centralized in Charleston. The growth of the backcountry led to the establishment of judicial districts throughout the colony, but low country areas continued to be identified primarily by their Anglican parish names. Following the Revolution, both district and county courts were established, but in 1800 most of the counties became districts. Finally, in 1868 all of the existing districts were renamed counties. New counties continued to be formed until the early part of the 20th century, with the most recent being Allendale in 1919. For maps and information on early counties and districts, consult The Formation of Counties in South Carolina
For most of the state's history, county officers had very little power or authority. Counties were essentially governed by their state legislative delegations. This system ended in 1975 when the Home Rule Act was passed. Each county now has a choice of one of four types of government. In the council form of government all executive and legislative power rests in the elected county council, while the council-supervisor form provides for an elected council and an elected supervisor with specified powers and duties. In both the council-administrator and council-manager forms the administrator or manager is appointed by the council.
Attempts to colonize the area now called South Carolina began in 1526 when the Spaniard Lucas Vásquez de Ayllón sailed from Hispaniola with six ships and 500 colonists. The result was catastrophic, and only about 150 survived to return to Hispaniola. The Huguenots, under Jean Ribault, also tried to colonize South Carolina in 1562; they named Port Royal and built Charlesfort. When Ribault returned to France for supplies, the men he left behind mutinied, built a vessel, and sailed for France. By the mid-1570s, settlement attempts abated for nearly a century.
English claims on the area dated to 1497 when John Cabot visited the New World and claimed the area for King Henry VII. These claims were the basis for Charles I's 1629 grant of “Carolana” to Sir Robert Heath, who failed to settle Carolina before the execution of Charles I in 1649. During the Commonwealth period in England, many citizens remained loyal to Charles II. At his ascension to the throne of England in 1660, eight men pressed their claims for a reward: Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon; George Monck, Duke of Albemarle; Lord William Craven; Lord John Berkeley; Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury; Sir George Carteret; Sir William Berkeley; and Sir John Colleton.
Charles II granted Carolina to the eight Lords Proprietors in 1663. After the claims of Heath's successors had been disposed of, the grant was revised and extended in 1665. The Great Plague of 1665, London's Great Fire of 1666, and war with the Dutch and French probably interfered with immediate settlement plans. Finally, in August 1669, three ships with over a hundred colonists sailed under the temporary command of Captain Joseph West and reached Barbados by November. Two of the original ships were lost in storms, but on 15 March 1670, the Carolina and her new sister ships anchored in what is now called Bull's Bay. Permanent settlement of South Carolina had finally begun.
The first settlement, called “Old Town,” was on the western side of the Ashley River at its mouth. The original settlers were entitled to headright grants—150 acres for each male over sixteen and a hundred acres for each female and each male under sixteen—but they chose security over land, surrounding their houses with a palisade and confining themselves to ten-acre plots. Their precaution proved wise because three Spanish frigates attacked the town in August 1670; bad weather forced the Spanish to withdraw.
A new town was laid out at Oyster Point on the neck of land between the Ashley and Cooper rivers, with streets intersecting at right angles. One of the first pre-planned cities in North America, Charles Town was settled in 1680. Renamed Charleston in 1783, it was the only repository for South Carolina's public records until 1785 and remained the capital of South Carolina until the legislature moved the capital to Columbia in 1790.
South Carolinians first found economic stability in the deerskin trade, but the resulting encroachment on the territory of the Yemassee Indians led to war in 1715. South Carolina also was a leading producer of naval stores, such as pitch and tar. This trade attracted pirates to South Carolina's shores; a welcome business in the seventeenth century, it became a real problem after the Yemassee Indian War. Blackbeard sailed four ships toward Charles Town in June 1718, stopped ships at leisure, and took hostages whom he traded for medical supplies. The South Carolina assembly had repeatedly requested the crown to protect the province, and about half of the free white men—nearly 600 individuals—signed a petition to that effect in 1717. The ineffectual policies of the Lords Proprietors and their apparent inability to defend the colony led to further disaffection. When a rumor reached Charles Town in 1719 that the Spanish were readying a fleet to attack the city, revolution broke out. While not bloody, the revolution of 1719 nonetheless effectively ended the rule of the Lords Proprietors, and the crown established a provisional royal government in 1721. When the crown bought out seven of the eight proprietors in 1729, South Carolina became a royal colony.
South Carolina is divided, culturally and topographically, into Up-Country and Low Country. The topographical division runs along the fall line, approximately from Aiken to Columbia to Camden to Cheraw. Culturally, Charleston and the surrounding Tidewater region is the Low Country. Residents of the Low Country tended toward large rice or indigo plantations with great numbers of slaves. Residents of the Up-Country tended to work small farms and in general had few slaves. The government was seated at Charleston, and residents of the Up-Country often complained of unfair representation. This was based at least in part on the lack of local government.
During the three decades from the 1730s into the 1760s, the frontier families of the Up-Country frequently rebelled against the provincial government. The Low Country elite promised representation, protection against outlaws and Indian attacks, and churches and schools, but they neglected to deliver on their promises. As a result of isolation, hardships, and a growing divergence from the Low Country, residents of the Up-Country seldom bothered to travel to Charles Town, except to petition for land. The Stamp Act of 1765, which imposed taxes on many official and unofficial papers, including not only legal documents but also playing cards, affected the pocket books of the Low Country planters. While they had the political power in South Carolina, residents of the Low Country needed the support, and numbers, of Up-Country frontiersmen to resist the Stamp Act. Some autonomy was granted in the District Circuit Court Act of 1769, which divided the province into seven judicial districts. About 1772, the first courts were held outside of Charleston. See Formation of Local Government for a full explanation.
The Revolutionary War found a deeply divided South Carolina. Charlestonians planned to resist the importation of tea, and the Boston Tea Party strengthened their resolve; Up-Country Loyalists were equally resolved and attacked a fort at Ninety-Six in November 1775. The war raged throughout South Carolina for seven years. The British attacked Charleston in June 1776 but were forced to withdraw. Then, in July 1776, a Cherokee War broke out in the Up-Country. Militia from South and North Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia defeated the tribe, and the northwest corner of South Carolina was ceded by the Cherokees in the treaty of May 1777. Between 1776 and 1779, Patriots and Loyalists fought skirmishes and continued marauding attacks on each other in the Up-Country, although the Loyalists were largely suppressed. In May 1778, the British once again moved against Charleston, laying siege to the city. Charleston capitulated on 12 May 1780, and the British began moving into the Up-Country, establishing a series of outposts. Meanwhile, the suppressed Loyalists began guerilla raids on Patriot farms, and local civil war broke out in several areas. The Patriots also formed guerilla bands and harassed both the Loyalists and the British. Finally, the Patriot partisans began driving the British out of the Up-Country, with major battles at Camden (May 1781), Ninety-Six (May–June 1781), and Eutaw Springs (September 1781); the British were so weakened that they and the Loyalists were forced to withdraw to Charleston. When the British finally evacuated Charleston on 14 December 1782, over four thousand Loyalists went with them.
Rice and indigo provided economic stability to South Carolina during much of the eighteenth century; the debts accrued during the Revolutionary War and the loss of bounties to support indigo production threatened to ruin the economy. Loyalists returning from exile in the Bahamas brought a new strain of cotton that thrived in the southeast. Then, in 1793, Eli Whitney improved the cotton gin. Within a decade, short-staple cotton transformed the Up-Country into a prosperous region.
Like rice and indigo before it, cotton was a labor-intensive crop. A shortage of laborers led South Carolina to temporarily reopen the slave trade in 1803; 40,000 blacks were imported in five years. As cotton pushed its way westward, political and journalistic battles over the slavery issue divided the United States into increasingly antagonistic factions. South Carolina and her neighbors felt threatened by the north's abolitionist movement, and when Abraham Lincoln was elected to the Presidency, South Carolina called a secession convention on 17 December 1860. As the first state to secede, the first state to ratify the Constitution of the Confederate States of America, and the first state to fire shots during the Civil War, South Carolina received particularly harsh treatment when Union General William T. Sherman and his troops subdued her in 1864. Virtually destroyed, South Carolina faced difficult decades of racial and economic strife, but she recovered and today is a prosperous and healthy state.
Successful research in South Carolina requires an understanding of the unique and complex development of its local government and jurisdictions. Unlike the other twelve British colonies, South Carolina did not form counties or towns during the colonial period.
- Districts/Counties, 1800–present - In 1800, the nine circuit court districts and thirty-seven counties were abolished and replaced by twenty-five districts. Some of the new districts were identical with counties in districts established 1785–99; other districts were new polities entirely. As the highest level of local government, all twenty-five districts had equal status and record-keeping functions. The original districts expanded and divided between 1800 and 1867 to become thirty districts. Under the new constitution adopted in 1868, districts were renamed counties.
The forty-six present-day counties in South Carolina trace their lineage to the formation of districts in 1800. Although many can trace their geographical lineage to 1785, and some can trace their records lineage to 1785, any listing of counties that provides a formation date pre-1800 misses the essential point that the pre-1800 counties were not the highest level of local government. Before 1800, all counties were counties in circuit court districts; residents could conduct their business in either the county or the circuit court district, and researchers must check the records of both. See County Resources—Districts/Counties, for a complete listing of the counties of South Carolina and their records.
The listing of Districts/Counties includes all districts and counties in existence from 1800 to the present and refers to the county, or county and circuit court district from which the district was formed. Some counties functioned before 1800, and the date those counties began functioning is recorded. The beginning dates for land, probate, and court records are the first indicated for the type of record specified in each county's courthouse and may include records of an earlier polity. Many records were destroyed, particularly near the end of the Civil War, and many other records are fragmentary; dates given for the first record do not imply that all records from that date are extant. Residents of the Up-Country counties often recorded records when they acquired local government, so some of the records pre-date the formation of local governments.
- Counties in Districts - In 1785, the seven circuit court districts were subdivided into thirty-three counties. Inferior courts were established in some of the counties, and record-keeping began at the local level. However, the circuit court districts continued to function, and many local actions were conducted at the district seat instead of the county seat. Three districts—Beaufort, Charleston, and Georgetown—were allowed to postpone the formation of county governments, and their counties never functioned. The residents of Orangeburgh District also preferred district government to county government, and three of the four counties in that district were disused from 1791 through 1799.
While many present-day counties were established geographically between 1785 and 1799, the counties created during that period did not keep records or function as local governments equally. The county did not become the highest level of local government throughout South Carolina until 1800. See County Resources—Counties in Districts, for a complete listing of counties established and abolished between 1785 and 1799.
The listing of counties in circuit court districts includes every county formed between 1785 and 1800. Counties abolished in 1800 are identified, and the location of their extant records is detailed.
- Circuit Court Districts, 1769-1800 - Circuit court districts were established in 1769 and began holding court by about 1772. Originally there were seven districts: Beaufort, Camden, Charleston, Cheraws, Georgetown, Ninety-Six, and Orangeburgh. Pinckney and Washington circuit court districts were added in 1791.The listing of circuit court districts details the extant records of the nine circuit court districts created in 1769 and 1791 and where the extant records are located. The counties formed in each district are identified.
- Townships -One of the early and genealogically important actions of the provincial (royal) government was the Township Act of 1731; additional townships were authorized in 1761. The act authorized eleven townships containing 20,000 acres each, and agents were sent to Europe to recruit families as settlers. The families were offered inducements such as free transportation to South Carolina, free provisions for one year, and free land. The townships neither created nor kept records; their functions were solely geographical. Townships, like parishes, were used for some tax districts and appeared as locators in grants and conveyances. The townships are included in the listing of Townships and Parishes.
- Parishes - In 1706, the Province of South Carolina established the Church of England as the official state-supported church. The twenty-five parishes established from 1706 through 1778 recorded vital records and became districts for the proportioning and election of representatives in 1716; parishes were also used as tax districts. They functioned as geographic locators in grants and conveyances, but did not necessarily replace the proprietary counties in that function; some grants and conveyances mention the parish, some the proprietary county, and some give both.
- Proprietary Counties - The first division of South Carolina into local polities occurred in 1682 when Berkeley, Colleton, and Craven proprietary counties were established; Carteret was added in 1685 and renamed Granville in 1708. These counties neither created nor kept records; their function was geographical. The proprietary counties served as districts for the assignment and election of representatives until 1716, militia duty, and general reference in land grants and conveyances (deeds). The proprietary counties were superceded by circuit court districts in 1769, but continued to be used as geographical references until the formation of counties within the circuit court districts in 1785. The forty-six current counties in South Carolina are listed with their proprietary counties in the listing of Proprietary Counties.
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