Good morning, all!
Hope everyone is doing well on this MLK Birthday celebration day. If you’re off work for the holiday, congratulations. If you still have to work, my sympathies go out to you 🙂
I attended the monthly meeting of the Charleston Chapter of the SC Genealogical Society yesterday. Good information given on the courts and the court system in South Carolina. I made a contact which might help me in the project I am currently working on for a client in California. All the court cases until 1792 were run through Charleston. I obtained a document from the SC Archives from the SC Judgment Rolls. It details a 1769 case where my client’s supposed ancestor, a planter in Craven County, SC, claimed he was kicked off his land by a couple other guys who actually commandeered and sold his crop. He was seeking 1000 pounds damages from the defendants. The file contains the arrest warrant, the plaintiff’s statement, and the defendants’ plea, but nothing further. So the results of the case might reside in the Charleston courthouse. My contact is going to check with her courthouse sources tomorrow for leads on where I might find them.
It’s always good to ask questions at meetings, and it’s always good to attend meetings in the first place! You never know what you might pick up. I remember that, when I was looking for information about my ancestor Benjamin Lovelace of Rutherford Co., NC, I checked Rutherford court records in the NC Archives in the period around 1868. This was when Benjamin’s estate entered administration after he died intestate. I found nothing relating to when he died. I have since concluded that his death occurred some 20 years before that, sometime between 1844 and 1850. So now, as a result of yesterday’s meeting, I figure I need to go back and read through court records from that earlier time period to see if I can discover anything there. Lots of work, but it’s what we as genealogists thrive on!
Y’all have a great day. I’ve got a Starbuck’s coffee in front of me, and it sure is good. [_]7 Time to go do some report writing for my client.