South Carolina Archives
Series Description

Township Grants, 1735-1761

CREATOR: Secretary of State. Recorded Instruments.

TITLE: Township grants

DATE: 1735-1761

VOLUME: 5.00 volumes

ARRANGEMENT: Series arranged chronologically.

BIOGRAPHICAL/HISTORICAL NOTE: The township system was created to encourage denser settlement on the frontier and greater white immigration to the province. Although similar schemes with this intent had been proposed earlier, the system did not achieve fruition until Governor Robert Johnson proposed a comprehensive scheme to the Board of Trade in 1730. The board agreed to the substance of the plan and instructed Johnson to establish eleven townships, each to be located at least sixty miles from Charles Town and to consist of 20,000 acres.

Each settler was to receive fifty acres for each person in the household and a town lot. S.C. Statute 1731(3)289 appropriated monies for the cost of surveying the townships and purchasing tools and equipment for poor immigrants. The provincial government granted the immigrants land free of the usual fees. The tools and provisions were known as the bounty and the fee-free grants as bounty grants. Not all township settlers were immigrants or bounty recipients.

Township grants initially were recorded with the other land grants. This series was created in 1735 when the secretary began separate volumes of specialized grants concurrent with the main series. Some township grants were recorded in the Colonial Land Grants series or, if bounty grants, in the Bounty Grants series.

SUMMARY SCOPE NOTE: This series consists of records on pre-printed forms of lands and town lots granted in the townships. Each entry includes the name of the grantee, the number of acres granted; the lot number of the town lot, if any; the township and county in which the grant was located; the boundaries, with the names of surrounding landholders; the quitrent requirements; the conditions of the grant; the certification date of the plat; and the date of the grant. Bounty grants are so annotated. The final volume in the series (2G) was used to record other types of grants after 1759.

INDEX/FINDING AID: The 429 grants in this series that were not copied into Colonial Land Grants (Copy Series) are included in the repository's On-line Combined Index to Multiple Record Series, 1675- 1929, and in the Combined Alphabetical Index produced by the repository on computer output microfilm (COM) in 1991. These indexes include the names of the grantees and surrounding landowners and all geographic locations and features mentioned in the grants. The numeric code 0002 007 was used to designate this series in the computer output microfilm index.

The names of the grantees (only) in all the volumes in this series, which bear the letter designations DD, EE, FF, and GG, are included in the nineteenth century consolidated index to the 2-letter volumes of the Colonial Land Grants series. Volume EE was divided into two parts when it was restored in 1966. The volumes also contain internal indexes.

GENERAL NOTE: Most documents in this series were transcribed into Colonial Land Grants (Copy Series).

HIERARCHICAL NOTE: Forms part of the records of Recorded Instruments of the Secretary of State.