CREATOR: State Treasurer. Commissioner of the Paper Medium Loan.
TITLE: Mortgages
DATE: 1786-1815
VOLUME: 2.00 volumes
ARRANGEMENT: Series arranged chronologically by date of mortgage in two
letter-designated volumes (A and B). The page numbers in the volumes run
consecutively through the two volumes and also function as mortgage numbers.
BIOGRAPHICAL/HISTORICAL NOTE: In South Carolina the American Revolution
was a bitter civil war, and the state emerged from that conflict with heavy
damage to property and its economy in shambles. The Paper Medium Loan was one of
a number of measures of debtor relief passed by the General Assembly in the
1780s. Like some of the other measures, it primarily helped large planters, many
of them in the lowcountry.
S.C. Statute 1785(4)712, An Act to Establish a Medium of Circulation, by Way of
Loan, and to Secure its Credit and Utility, provided that the state would loan
between 30 and 250 pounds in paper money to persons mortgaging land worth three
times, or gold or silver plate worth twice the borrowed amount. The act
specified the denominations and quantities of the paper bills to be issued and
provided that the bills were to be accepted at face value by "the treasury of
this State in discharge of all debts, duties, and taxes." An act of 1786 altered
the denomination of the bills.
Interest was set at seven per cent per year and the borrowed sum was to be
repaid within five years. A series of subsequent appropriation acts delayed the
time that the loans had to be repaid until S.C. Statute 1826(6)295 required the
Comptroller General to call in the debts "in three equal annual installments."
SUMMARY SCOPE NOTE: This series consists of signed and sealed mortgages
to the Commissioners of the Loan Office. Information includes the name of the
person receiving the loan, a description of property being mortgaged, the amount
of the loan, and the terms of the loan. Many of the signatures were cut out or
defaced in the process of recording the satisfaction of the loans. In a few
cases receipts have been substituted for removed mortgages that explain their
removal for use in legal proceedings.
Property descriptions for mortgaged real estate usually include acreage;
physical location including natural features, boundaries, and surrounding
landholders; and description of how the property was acquired by the owner who
mortgaged it. Some mortgages mention that the owners purchased the property from
the Commissioners of Forfeited Estates.
INDEX/FINDING AID: All personal names and geographic locations mentioned
in the mortgages 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. The abstracts
of the mortgages in these indexes include the wording (plat and appraisement) at
the end of the description when those documents are present in series S 218158,
Plats and Appraisements, 1785-1786. Those documents are filed and can be
retrieved by the mortgage (page) number. In these indexes plantation names and
the names of baronies were indexed as topics, and the topical term Forfeited
Estates was used for transactions involving forfeited estates of loyalists. The
numeric code 0045 003 was used to designate this series in the computer output
microfilm index.
ADDITIONAL FORM: The entire series and the related plats and
appraisements in series S218158 have been digitized. The digital images
are linked to index hits from the On-line Records Index on the repository's
website.
HIERARCHICAL NOTE: Forms part of the office of the Commissioner of the
Paper Medium Loan of the State Treasurer.
