CREATOR: Secretary of State. Recorded Instruments.
TITLE: Colonial land grants (copy series)
DATE: 1675-1788
VOLUME: 63.00 volumes and 27.00 microfilm reels
ARRANGEMENT: Series arranged roughly chronologically.
BIOGRAPHICAL/HISTORICAL NOTE: This series, commonly called the "Royal
Grants," is the result of an attempt to prepare a duplicate set of all colonial
grants for use in the Columbia office of the Secretary of State. After the move
of the state's capital to Columbia in 1789, offices for the Secretary of State
were maintained in both Columbia and Charleston. The Charleston office retained
the original grant books. Most of the copy volumes in this series were made
under the supervision of commissioners Stephen Drayton and John Huger between
1789 and 1792, and most bear the title "Royal Grants" on their spines. Volumes
38 and 39 are the result of Drayton and Huger's only partially successful
attempt to compile Proprietary Era grants.
SUMMARY SCOPE NOTE: This series consists of copies of earlier recordings of
land grants. Most entries include the name of the grantee; the number of acres
granted; the 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.
Township grants include the name of the township and the number of the town lot,
if any. Town lot grants include town lot numbers. Bounty grants are so
annotated.
Most of the entries for the only partially successful attempt to compile the
Proprietary Era grants were taken from the series, Abstracts of Grants,
1692-1718, and do not include full texts. Most volumes are recorded on
pre-printed forms. Volume 40 bears the title "Georgia Grants" and consists of
1787 and 1788 re-recordings of Georgia grants; it is apparently the result of
article 5 of the 1787 Treaty of Beaufort between Georgia and South
Carolina.
INDEX/FINDING AID: Names of grantees and the county or township in which the
grant was located are included in the repository's On-line Combined index to
Multiple Record Series, 1675-1929. This indexing information was taken from an
existing index and does not include the names of surrounding landholders or more
specific geographic locations and features mentioned in the grants. When
included, plantation and barony names were indexed as topics, not as geographic
locations. These access terms are also available on a separate two-reel computer
output microfilm (COM) index produced by the repository in 1978 and in the
Combined Alphabetical Index produced by the repository on computer output microfilm in 1991. The numeric
code 0002 005 was used to designate this series in the computer output microfilm
indexes. A nineteenth century manuscript index is also available in the
repository.
Surrounding landholders are included in the indexing to the published
abstracts cited below under Additional Form.
ADDITIONAL FORM: Volumes 1-16, 18-21, 23, 25, 27, 29-35, 37, and 43 of
this series are available on microfilm produced by the Genealogical Society of
Utah. Volumes 17, 22, 24, 26, 28, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, and 42 of this series are
available on microfilm produced by the repository. Abstracts of the first
thirty-one volumes, 1731-1775, have been published in Brent H. Holcomb, South Carolina's Royal
Grants (Columbia, S.C.: SCMAR,
2006 - 2009).
LOCATION OF ORIGINALS: All of the original records from which these
copies were made are in the holdings of the repository.
HIERARCHICAL NOTE: Forms part of the records of Recorded Instruments of
the Secretary of State.
