Charleston County, South Carolina Land and Property

United States South Carolina  Charleston County  Land and Property

Land Record Books
The original Charleston City and County land record books are kept at the county courthouse. Records dated 1719 to 1873 have been microfilmed: 23503 ff.

Plats For State Land Grants 1784-1868
This series consists of recorded copies of plats for state land grants for the Charleston and the Columbia Series with their certificates of admeasurement or certification. All personal names and geographic features on these plats are included in the repository's On-line Index to Plats for State Land Grants

The South Carolina Constitution of 1790 required the surveyor general to maintain offices in both the new capital at Columbia and in Charleston. The surveyor general began to use separate volumes for recording plats in his Columbia office in 1796. Before that, all plats were recorded in the set of volumes begun in Charleston in 1784. After 1796, most plats for land grants in the Upper Division of the state were recorded and filed in Columbia. The surveyor general chose to make the Columbia volumes a continuation of the state plat volumes begun in Charleston and gave the initial Columbia volume the number thirty-six to correspond with the number of the volume that had then been reached in the Charleston series. As a result, there are volumes numbered thirty-six through forty-three from each office, but the records in them are not duplicative.

Also included are the Plan Books containing Plats and Plans.


 * Smith, Henry A.M. "Charleston: The Original Plan and the Earliest Settlers," The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Jan., 1908), pp. 12-27. Digital version at JSTOR ($).
 * Smith, Henry A.M. "Charleston and Charleston Neck: The Original Grantees and the Settlements along the Ashley and Cooper Rivers," The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Jan., 1918), pp. 3-76. Digital version at JSTOR ($).