South Carolina Archives
Series Description

Grand Jury Presentments, 1783-1877  

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.