SOUTH
CAROLINA
COLONIAL
QUITRENT LISTS
CHECK BACK AND RELOAD
THE PAGE AS I WILL BE ADDING NEW IMAGES REGULARLY OVER THE NEXT MONTHS
If you have comments,
corrections, or find something missing, please send a request to ashvainmo@yahoo.com
These are copies of the
original quitrent lists for South Carolina.
They are from the hardcopy records available from the South Carolina
Department of Archives and History. They
have not been microfilmed at this time, so this website is the only way to
access the records outside of either viewing the original at the archives
building or ordering photocopies (as I did to complete this project).
The volume is oversized and
the photocopy pages were unable to cover the entire page. Hence, each file is a merger of four photocopied
images. The breakline
was chosen to minimize text interference and maximize continuity of the images,
although it was not always completely possible.
The images are necessarily oversized, so if you wish to print a
hardcopy, you will have to resize the image down. The original pages in the book are two
somewhat larger than 11” x 14” pages side-by-side.
Note that many landowners
paid quitrents in arrears since they had to travel to Charleston to make the
payments. Consequently, some landowners
are not on the list for one or two consecutive years, but then appear in the
next year and are assessed back taxes.
This is annotated as “3 yr” or “2 yr”, and etc., in the descriptive
column next to the landowner’s name.
Also, at the far right, other notes were sometimes entered as
appropriate to record information about the lands being taxed.
The tax records were entered
chronologically by the date the tax was paid, not geographically nor
alphabetically. At some point I hope to
provide an index of names, but in the meantime, here are the papers in their
original form.
Researchers might wonder how,
given that the records cover many years, the handwriting on the pages is
identical across the series. According
to the South Carolina Department of Archives and History, “The Quitrent Book,
Receiver General (S209001) for 1764 appears to be in the hand of Richard
Lambton, the Deputy Auditor. I believe
the book to be an official office copy, probably assembled from receipt books
and ledgers that are no longer extant.
The books were all rebound about thirty-five years ago, so the original
binding is lost. There are no notations
regarding the date of writing. These
records would have been copied into the Quitrent Book no later than 1764, I
believe, as they were active records.
There would certainly be no reason to copy them after 1775, as their
connection to the Crown would have made the information in them largely moot.” So, in essence, these records are analogous
to land deeds and wills in the South Carolina colonial, state and county
records – they are not the literal *original record*, but are a copy of the
original. As such, there may be the
occasional transfer / transcription errors in spelling, entries or the like,
which will be undetectable to us today as we do not have the originals to
compare this copy to. However, as noted,
the copy was made more-or-less contemporaneous to the event, so they are as
accurate as we can have for these records for the timeframe covered. The entire series appears to be in the same
hand, but later years do appear to have a very slightly different style. The loss of the original binding material makes
it impossible to determine the manufacturing date of the ledger book in its
original form.
Quitrent List Volume Intro Pages
1760 Quitrent List
1761 Quitrent List
1762 Quitrent List
1763 Quitrent List
1764 Quitrent List
NOTE: ALL THE SOURCE FILES FOR THESE YEARS ARE AT THE
LINKS BELOW!
These years aren’t arranged yet into the consolidated,
single-pages like the previous years.
You can download the source files and read them in numerical order to
get the annual quitrent rolls. Also note
that each folder has a 7zip archive with all the source files for full download. Stitching them together is a work in progress….
