How
to Get Started
On This Site
If
you are new
to "lowcountry" South Carolina research, you'll want to review the
changes
in South Carolina districts over the last 250 years. The old
Colleton
District encompassed many areas now in other modern counties.
Much
of the old upper Colleton County is now in Dorchester County.
At
the Dorchester
County SCGenWeb you'll find many cemetery transcriptions, and
marriage,
birth, and death records for Upper Colleton families. Here are
good maps showing the formations of the Old
Districts and Counties of South Carolina which is very
helpful
in relating to old census records. Use your BACK button to return
here from the SCGenWeb.
If you are a new
visitor to
this site, you are welcome and encouraged to
explore!
If you just want to get to the "bottom line" you may want to start here:
1. Search the Dorchester County SCGenWeb Site
Search. Note: this will only find information housed on
this site at http://www.rootsweb.com/~scdorche/ , including the
archived
queries, transcribed documents, cemetery transcriptions, surname
registry,
etc. Any data linked from the Dorchester County SCGenWeb
but
housed on a town site or personal genealogy page will not be included
in
the search. It takes approximately a week for the site search to pick
up
additions of new material, but everything housed on this site will be
searched.
2. Check the Dorchester County SCGenWeb Look-Up
list for a volunteer who may have research material relevant to
your
genealogy search.
3. Search the Dorchester County SCGenWeb Queries
on RootsWeb to see if someone else is researching the same
family.
If not, be sure to post your query! Don't forget to post messages
to the appropriate surname boards, too.
4. Browse through the titles listed on the Research
page - there may be a linked web site that will be of help.
It
includes links to transcribed documents housed on this site as well as
off-site, including single name or family association websites, many of
which have large databases.
Historical
Centers and
Research
Libraries
If you have a chance to visit South Carolina for
a genealogy field
trip- Locations with Web Sites include maps and
directions
South Carolina
Historical Society
100 Meeting Street
Charleston, South Carolina 29402
(843)723-3225
Fax: (843) 723-8584
info@schistory.org
Library Hours: 9:00 a.m. to 4:00
p.m. Mon-Fri
9:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Sat.
South
Carolina Department of Archives and History
8301 Parklane Road
Columbia, SC 29223
Tele: (803) 896-6100
Fax: (803) 896-6198
Monday through Friday 8:45 a.m.
to 4:45 p.m.
South
Caroliniana Library
Manuscripts Division
University of South
Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
Tel: (803) 777-5183
Fax: (803) 777-5747
Charleston County Public
Library
South
Carolina Room
68 Calhoun St.
Charleston, SC 29401
Monday-Thursday 9-9
Friday & Saturday 9-6
Sunday 2-5
Dorchester
County Library
506 North Parler Avenue
St. George, SC 29477-2297
(843) 563-9189
(843) 563-7823 (Fax)
Mon-Thu
9:30AM - 8:00PM
Friday
9:30AM - 4:30PM
Saturday
9:30AM - 5:00PM
Sunday
1:00PM - 5:00PM
Colleton
County Memorial Library
600 Hampton Street
Walterboro, SC 29488-4098
(843) 549-5621
(843) 549-5122 (Fax)
Monday -
Thursday
9:30 a.m. - 8:00 p.m.
Friday
9:30 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Saturday
9:30 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
|
LDS Family History
Centers -
How to Get Started
The following was contributed by
fellow researcher,
Earl Colley, on another mailing list. It is used here with Earl's
consent:
"Not all LDS Churches have Family
History Centers.
But the people at any LDS Church should be able to tell you where to
find
the nearest Family History Center.
Another possibility is to go to the
LDS Web
site at www.familysearch.org
What you need to see is the Family
History
Library Catalog. At the Family History Centers it can be seen on
microfiche
or on their computers. I prefer the microfiche. Ask one of the Family
History
Specialists to show you where the microfiche Family History Library
Catalog
(FHLC) is kept. Or ask them to show you how to access the FHLC on
the computer. I am a Family History Specialist at our local LDS FHC and
I cheerfully do this for researchers over and over.
Let me use my own recent research
as an example.
I have an ancestor, Absalom Gilly, who is listed on the 1840 and the
1850
census of Carter County, Tennessee. Now I want to learn more about him.
So I went to the FHLC microfiche
drawer and
looked for the section for the United States. The whole file is
alphabetized,
so it is easy to search. In the U.S. part of the file I looked for
Tennessee
(again, alphabetically). Then among the Tennessee microfiche, I looked
for Carter County. Now I see subjects and/or place names. I looked
under
"C" for Court Records. You would see Census, then Church records, then
Court Records and then many other subjects further down the alphabet.
Once I found the list of Court
Records for
Carter County, Tennessee I selected the date interval of interest to
me.
Opposite the chosen date interval I found a 7 digit number. If that
number
begins with 0, 1, or 2, what you want to see is a doll of microfilm. If
the 7 digit number begins with a 6, then you want to see a set of
microfiche.
Sometimes the number
of a film roll will begin with one or
more
zeros, and for convenience the zeros are not copied, but that does not
happen very often.
When I found the 7 digit number for
the microfilm
roll that reproduces the Carter County, Tennessee Court records for the
1840's I used that information to fill out an order form. I paid the
person
who was taking orders $3.25 and gave her the order. She gave me the
carbon
copy of the order and sent my order (by computer modem) to the main
library
at Salt Lake City. In a little more than 2 weeks the film arrived at
the
FHC for my use there for about 4 weeks. If I need more time to search
the
film I can pay an additional fee to extend the time.
So far, I found that Absalom had
been ordered
to work on the road near his home, which told me the neighborhood where
he lived. I also found that he had been charged with selling whiskey to
a slave, but was let off by only paying the court costs. I have now
ordered
the microfilm for the same courts for later dates, and hope to learn
more
about the life of old Absalom.
Among LDS families, boys (and
lately girls)
just out of high school offer 2 years of their life to service to their
church. They get no money for that and must pay their own living
expenses,
usually with help from parents and relatives. One of the tasks that may
be assigned to them is to take a portable microfim camera to a place
where
historical records are available, and copy those records on film. I
think
there are now a little over 2 million of those rolls of film which have
been made and are filed at Salt Lake City for loan to the Family
History
Centers all over the world. No local Family History Center would be
able
to store more than a very small portion of these films. They usually
keep
just a few of the films that are frequently used.
I have helped hundreds of people
access these
records. Not every attempt is a success, but most people are happy with
their results and find this method more efficient than travelling long
distances to visit Court Houses, Church Archives, State Archives,
National
Archives, etc.
I can never give enough thanks to
the people
who have made this information available to me, but I try to do so by
giving
my time to help them help others."
Lowcountry South
Carolina Family
History Centers
Charleston South
Carolina
1519 Sam Rittenberg Blvd
Charleston, Charleston County, South Carolina, United States
Phone: 843-766-6017
Hours: T-Th 10am-9pm; F-Sat 10am-2pm
Moncks Corner South Carolina
319 West Main St
Moncks Corner, Berkeley County, South Carolina, United States
Phone: 843-761-8671
Hours: W-Th 6-9pm; Sat 10am-2pm.
Orangeburg South Carolina
1740 Broughton Street NE
Orangeburg, Orangeburg County, South Carolina, United States
Hours: T 10am-7pm; Sun 2-6pm.