South Carolina Archives Series
Description
Grand Jury Presentments, 1783-1877
CALL NUMBER:
S 165010
CREATOR: General Assembly.
TITLE: Grand jury presentments
DATE: 1783-1877
VOLUME: 4.30 cubic ft.
ARRANGEMENT: Series arranged chronologically by date and thereunder by
assigned number, with a separate sequence for those items bearing no
contemporary recording of the date (N.D. or No Date items).
SUMMARY SCOPE NOTE: Grand Jury presentments state the concerns or needs
of a district, as presented by grand juries, to the legislature. The concerns
and grievances were submitted along with information on specific crimes to the
appropriate court. The clerk of court recopied the information dealing with
specific grievances and forwarded only this portion to the General Assembly, the
appropriate body to consider such matters.
This series illustrates the wide power exercised by the General Assembly in the
period, and decisions were made on a multitude of varying issues. Common topics
include inadequacies of jails and other public facilities; compensation of
jurors and constables; regulation of liquor, slaves, and free blacks;
transportation improvements; and schools. The number of grievances presented in
each document varies as does the amount of detail about each grievance. Some
grand juries even presented prospective solutions. The clerk of court usually
dated the documents and included the names of the grand jurors.
INDEX/FINDING AID: Entire series indexed to the item level in the repository's On- line
Index to Legislative Papers, 1782-1866. Most, but not all, documents also indexed
in a fifteen-reel computer output
microfilm (COM) Index to Legislative Papers made available by the repository in
1991. The numeric code 0010 015 was used to designate this series in the
computer output microfilm index.
These indexes include personal names, geographic locations, and subject terms.
ADDITIONAL FORM: Entire series also available in digital form on the
repository's website. The images on the website are linked to index hits
from the on-line index.
ASSOCIATED MATERIAL: Grand jury presentments were often also published in
newspapers.
HIERARCHICAL NOTE: Forms part of the records of the General Assembly.
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