South Carolina Archives
Series
Description
CALL NUMBER: S 108096
CREATOR: Dept. of Archives and History. Archives
and Publications Division.
TITLE: Memorials of seventeenth and eighteenth century South Carolina
land titles, 1731-1775 (Microcopy No. 12)
DATE: 1984
VOLUME: 7.00 microfilm reels and 5.00 microfilm reels
ARRANGEMENT: Series arranged in numerically designated volumes.
BIOGRAPHICAL/HISTORICAL NOTE: Memorial Books: After South Carolina was
purchased from the Lords Proprietors and became a royal colony in 1729, the
crown had legislation enacted to help facilitate the collection of quitrents.
The Quitrent Act of 1731 required the registration of land grants issued during
the proprietary period so as to validate the grants and establish an effective
system to collect the rent (quitrents) due on the land. Later legislation
provided for the registration of royal grants. The landholder was to present to
the Auditor General or his Deputy documented evidence of the land title,
including the amount of quitrent, but because not all grants were registered and
the crown never established a successful mechanism to enforce the law, the
payment of quitrents basically remained voluntary.
The system of quitrents and the Auditor General's records end in the mid-1770s
with the impending collapse of the royal government.
Beaufort Town Lots: S.C. Statute 1740(3)574-575 provided for lot owners to
forfeit to the Crown the sum of two pounds per year for each lot that was
neglected and on which nothing was built. This act was intended to hasten
settlement of the town so as to help strengthen the borders of the Province. The
money collected was to be used to build a free school.
SUMMARY SCOPE NOTE: This series consists of a published microfilm edition
of the copy series made ca. 1821 of the Memorial Books recorded by the office of
His Majesty's Auditor General for South Carolina between 1731 and 1776. A number
of the original Memorial Books are nearly destroyed from severe mold
damage, and that series is restricted from general use. When these copies of the
original Memorials of Land Titles were made, the Beaufort Town Lots certificates
were included in the copies, although they are not memorials. These certificates
were also indexed with the memorials.
The Memorials series consists of copies of the registrations of land title
documentation which was authorized by the Quitrent Act of 1731 to serve a dual
purpose: 1) validating land grants made by the Lords Proprietors, and 2)
establishing a more efficient system of collecting quitrents. The documentation
provided by the landowner to the Auditor General's office could be either
recorded in full or in an abstract called a "memorial." The full recordings are
contained in volumes 1, the first 251 pages of volume 2, and volume 4 of the
copy series depicted here. Eventually both forms became known as memorials.
Most of the documents are exact copies or abstracts of grants, but also included
are plats and certificates of survey, deeds of gift, lease and releases,
renunciations of dower, and wills. The copies of plats from the proprietary
period are particularly valuable because few other plats from that period
survive. Information contained in the original volumes and the copies of the
volumes completed in 1821 includes names of the memorialist, persons associated
with the title, surrounding landowners, and surveyors; descriptions of the
property; and dates of recording.
The Beaufort Town Lot series consists of copies of certificates of survey of
town lots in Beaufort, which were registered for the purpose of enforcing an act
of 1740 which required the collection of fines on unimproved lots on Beaufort.
Information includes: names of grantee, number and date of warrant to survey;
date of certificate; number of lot; boundaries; and name/signature of Surveyor
General.
INDEX/FINDING AID: All personal names of owners in the chain of title and
all surrounding landholders as well as all geographic locations and features in
the documents depicted on this microfilm publication are included in the
repository's On-line Combined Index to Multiple Record Series, 1675-1929. They
are also included in the Combined Alphabetical Index produced by the
repository on computer output microfilm (COM) in 1991 and in the separate five-reel
computer output microfilm index produced by the repository in 1980 and sold with
the microcopy. The numeric code 0030 002 was used to designate this series in
the computer output microfilm indexes. The names of surveyors on plats and
witnesses to documents were not indexed.
A printed introductory pamphlet that contains a detailed explanation of these
records and the computer output microfilm index accompanies this microfilm
publication. This pamphlet mistakenly says that the names of surveyors were
indexed.
HIERARCHICAL NOTE: Forms part of the records of Archives and Publications
Division of the South Carolina Dept. of Archives and
History.