Map It Out - McClurkin land in South Carolina

October 11, 2019

Map It Out - McClurkin land in South Carolina

A very helpful website that I only recently discovered is the South Carolina Archives. It allows you to search for ancestors by name and has all the old South Carolina Wills, many colonial era plats as well as revolutionary war payment receipts indexed. The plats have been very cool to look through since each one includes a mini map of the area. I wrote about James McClurkin some time ago and this has allowed me to see plats for James and each member of his family when they claimed land in 1772.

James McClurkin himself was granted 350 acres of land, the plat shows several small rivers running through it. James jr. recived 100 acres bounded on three sides by a large river. Jane and Lillias received neat squares of land while Thomas, Mary and Eleanor received oddly shaped geometric plats. When it was granted all the land was in Camden district, but when the counties split up some ended up in Chester, some in Fairfield, some in Laurens and so on.

It’s also interesting to map out where the land went. James McClurkin Sr. sold his full 350 acres in 1788 to Robert Kirpatrick. James Jr seems to have sold his land fairly quickly, the deed doesn’t survive, but a later deed mentions the sale. Samuel’s land was probably part of the land he eventually left to his children. Some of the land hasn’t been traced yet. Mary seems to have died without any children before 1795 and it’s not clear what happened to her land, or two the land of Lillias, who may or may not married a Baird and had children. I would love to someday see all the old SC deeds mapped out showing the transfer of land between people and families, but that may be out of the scope of what is likely to happen.