CALL NUMBER:        S 213184

CREATOR: Surveyor General's Office.

TITLE: Colonial plat books (copy series)

DATE: 1731-1775

VOLUME: 26.00 volumes and 15.00 microfilm reels

ARRANGEMENT: Series arranged roughly chronologically in numerically designated volumes.

BIOGRAPHICAL/HISTORICAL NOTE: This series is a duplicate set of the original recordings of plats for colonial land grants. This set was prepared for use in the Columbia office of the Surveyor General. After the move of the state's capital to Columbia in 1789, the Surveyor General maintained offices in both Columbia and Charleston. The Charleston office retained the original plat books. An attempt to copy the land records between 1789 and 1792 failed to duplicate the colonial plat books. A December 15, 1819 resolution of the General Assembly created a commission to supervise the copying of the records of the Surveyor General. The commission contracted with Surveyor General Daniel Tillinghast to create the copies.

SUMMARY SCOPE NOTE: This series consists of copies of earlier recordings of plats for colonial land grants. The plats include their certificates of admeasurement.  In addition, this series includes some other plats that had not been recorded when the American Revolution closed the office. The plats are scale drawings and show the scale to which they were drawn; names of the proposed grantees; acreage; boundaries; boundary markers; natural features; improvements, if any; the names of any surrounding landowners; and the names of the surveyors. Roads, creeks, branches, swamps, and the like are named. The certificates of admeasurement include the date of the precept from the surveyor general ordering the survey as well as the date of the surveyor's certificate of admeasurement.

INDEX/FINDING AID: All personal names and all geographic features on these plats are included in the repository's On-line Combined Index to Multiple Record Series, 1675-1929. Plantation and barony names were indexed as topics, not as geographic locations.  These access terms are also available on a separate four-reel computer output microfilm (COM) index to this series produced by the repository in 1979 and in the Combined Alphabetical Index produced by the repository on computer output microfilm in 1991. In the computer output microfilm indexes the numeric code 0009 003 was used to designate this series. A nineteenth century manuscript index (only to the names of the persons for whom the land was surveyed) is also available in the repository.

ADDITIONAL FORM: This series has been digitized and the digital images are linked to index hits from the On-line Records Index on the repository's website.  Volumes 13 and 14 of the original series were digitized instead of their corresponding volumes in this series, which have tight bindings.  Volumes 2, 3, 5, 7-10, 12-17, 19-21 are available on microfilm produced by the Genealogical Society of Utah. Volume 19 is filmed with Volume 7 and incorrectly identified as Volume 7b. Volumes 1, 4, 6, 11, and 18 are available on microfilm produced by the repository. The Genealogical Society of Utah film also depicts volumes 4, 8, 11, and 19 of the original Colonial Plat Books series.

ASSOCIATED MATERIAL: The original surveys forwarded to the surveyor general for recording are called "duplicate plats" because they are duplicate to the officially recorded copies. Many of these surveys survive in Series S 213182, Duplicate Plats (Colonial Series), 1731-1775. The original recordings are also in the repository in Series S 213183, Colonial Plat Books, 1731-1775.

Neither the original surveys nor the recorded copies survive for the period prior to 1731, but copies of some Proprietary Era plats can be found in volumes 1, 2, and 3 of the original Memorial Books series and volumes 1, the first 251 pages of volume 2, and volume 4 of the copy series of the Memorial Books.

HIERARCHICAL NOTE: Forms part of the records of the Surveyor General's Office of the Secretary of State.