South Carolina Archives
Series Description

Individual Tax Returns for 1824

CREATOR: Comptroller General.

TITLE: Individual tax returns for 1824

DATE: 1825

VOLUME: 6.60 cubic ft. and 4.00 microfilm reels (35 mm)

ARRANGEMENT: Most of the series is arranged by tax district and
there under alphabetically by the name of the person taxed, but there are three separate sequences of this arrangement due to the discovery
of additional records after parts of the series had been arranged and indexed. Index references are to an arbitrary assigned number.

BIOGRAPHICAL/HISTORICAL NOTE: South Carolina first based its tax structure on differing values for different types of land in 1784. The legislature revised the valuation of land in 1815 by S.C. Statute 1815(6)7. The 1815 valuation was still in effect for the 1824 tax year. Other specifics governing the taxes being collected by this record series can be found in An Act to Raise Supplies for the Year One Thousand
Eight Hundred and Twenty-Four (S.C. Statute 1824(6)251).

SUMMARY SCOPE NOTE: This series consists of 5172 individual tax
returns for the 1824 tax year. The returns were made out in 1825. The surviving tax returns in this series are almost entirely from the Lower
Division. Only about seventy returns for the City of Charleston (St. Philips and St. Michaels parishes) are present.

Information in the series includes the number of acres of land (in 13 categories of assessed value under the 1815 Act to Fix the Value of Lands in this State for Taxation); the "Value of Lots in Towns and Villages"; the "Value of Goods, Wares and Merchandize"; the value of "Factorage, Employments, Faculties and Professions, and Commissions of Vendue Masters and Commission Merchants"; the number of slaves (listed as "Negroes"); the number of "Free Negroes, Mulattoes, &c."; and "Theatrical, Public Shows, &c. in Towns and Villages not incorporated." The last item was taxed at twenty dollars per day. Entries were made on pre-printed forms. Most returns also include the date of the return, the signature of the person being taxed (or their agent) or the signature of the executor or administrator of an estate, and the signature of the tax collectors.

INDEX/FINDING AID: Entire series indexed in the repository's On-line Combined Index to Multiple Record Series, 1675-1929. Index entries for the first 4160 returns in this series were included in the Combined Alphabetical Index produced by the repository on computer output microfilm (COM) in 1991. The repository also produced a one reel COM index to this portion of the series in 1978 but has retired this incomplete index.

The indexing to this series includes the names of the persons being taxed, the names of their agents and of administrators or executors of estates, and the judicial district and/or parish from which the tax was being collected. In the lowcountry, parishes served as tax districts. Returns that include entries for "Free Negroes, Mulattoes, &c." are also indexed to the topic "Blacks, Free." The numeric code 0015 052 was used to designate this series in the computer output microfilm indexes.

Maps of South Carolina tax districts and further information on tax collection can be found in the pamphlet accompanying Microcopy Number 15, South Carolina Tax Returns, 1783-1800.

ADDITIONAL FORM: The entire series has been digitized.  The digital images are linked to index hits from the On-Line Records Index on the repository's website. 

The entire series is also available on microfilm produced by Genealogical Society of Utah volunteers.  By agreement with the society, the repository has reproduction duplicates of this film and the right to sell additional research copies.

ASSOCIATED MATERIAL: Few South Carolina records documenting individual tax assessments and payments before 1858 survive. South Carolina Archives Microcopy Number 15, South Carolina Tax Returns, 1783-1800, publishes a significant exception as does Philip D. Morgan, editor, "A Profile of a Mid-eighteenth Century South Carolina Parish: the Tax Return of Saint James', Goose Creek," South Carolina Historical Magazine 81(1980): 51-65. A photocopy of the assessment on Edisto Island in St. Paul's Parish, April 20, 1732, in the New York Public Library is in Folder 5, Container 10 (old box 8) of Series P900069, Miscellanous Donated Papers, ca. 1775-1965. The records of the Comptroller General also include York District returns for the 1827 tax year and stray volumes for a few tax districts, 1804-1857, in the Tax Return Books and Tax Record Books series. Morgan, editor, "A Profile," pp. 51-52, provides details for other colonial exceptions.

GENERAL NOTE: Ten numbers in the numeric sequence were apparently not used. There are no returns with the assigned numbers 998, 1525, 1938, 2292, 2468, 2808, 2818, 3848, 4939, and 4964. A large number of the returns that had no geographic location on the manuscript have been identified as having come from Williamsburg District through the signature of the district's tax collector, George W. Witherspoon.

HIERARCHICAL NOTE:  Forms part of the records of the Comptroller General.