South Carolina Bible Records

Online Records

 * Family Bible Index - with over 200,000 entries
 * The National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) has an index of over 40,000 digitized family Bible records and each day more records are digitized and added to the Index.
 * Index to Early Bible Records provides a free index to over 17,000 online and offline pre-1830 Bible records.

Online Bible Indexes:


 * South Carolina Bible Records on South Carolina Pioneers.net: Contains an index list of Bible records in their collection. You must be a member to see the contents of the Bible record.

Other Bible Abstracts


 * Bible Records from the Southern States by Memory A. Lester - many are for South Carolina
 * Bible Records of South Carolina by Leonardo Andrea
 * South Carolina Bible Records by Dorothy Harris Phifer WorldCat

South Carolina Bible Records
A Bible was often given by relatives to a bride as a wedding gift, where she recorded information about her immediate family and close relatives. Relationships were seldom stated but were often implied. Names of parents, children, and their spouses, including maiden names, were frequently given along with dates of birth, marriage, and death. Sometimes the age of a person was given at the time of death. Many families kept Bible records from the 1700s (and sometimes earlier) to more recent times, although few have survived. Some have been donated to local libraries or societies.

Bible records can be used as a substitute in providing birth, marriage, and date information when South Carolina did not record vital information. In Marion County, for example, clerks used family Bibles to create delayed birth certificates. Some collections and compilations of Bible records are listed below.

Start with the free Index to Early Bible Records (pre-1830; 17,000 entries).

DAR Bible Collections and Indexes 


 * [South Carolina] Genealogical Collection by the Daughters of the American Revolution


 * This collection is indexed in the following:


 * South Carolina Name Index to Genealogical Records - complete index
 * An Index to Some of the Family Records of the Southern States 35,000 microfilm references from the NSDAR files and Elsewhere by E. Kay Kirkham 


 * South Carolina Bible Records, vols 1-3 by the Daughters of the American Revolution

Copies, or abstracts of old family Bibles that are no longer known to exist, may survive in Revolutionary War Pension application files at NARA, Washington, D.C., which are available online at three commercial websites: Ancestry, Fold3, and Heritage Quest Online.