History Of South Carolina Land Surveying

From the inception of South Carolina in 1670 as the Charles Town settlement, land surveys have played a large part in the development of the land into the state as we know it today.  Since the first settlement of Charles Town to the final demarcation of the boundary between South Carolina and North Carolina in 1813, surveys (or lack thereof) have guided the path of South Carolina.

The art of land surveying and management affected South Carolina even before its first settlers reached the shores of the New World.  John Locke, the famous philosopher and economist, had established a plan of government and land settlement for the new colony.  Proper land surveying, mapping, and disbursement were crucial parts of his plan.

In order to be granted territory in South Carolina, the Lord Proprietors required extensive surveys for any settler to be granted a parcel of land. This system would last for over 40 years, with colonial surveyors working out of Charles Town. Settlers could obtain land only after going through a rigorous process; they were required to first appear before the governor and the Council, then the governor would issue a warrant, and that warrant would then be taken to a secretary who recorded it.  And this was before the surveyors even got involved.  Once the warrant was officially recorded, the surveyor was sent out to make a plat of the land. Once the plat was drawn up, the settler would then have to take said plat back to the secretary to be certified, and a sealed grant would have to be taken back to the governor and council for signatures, and finally, the land grant was made official, and recorded in the register. Because of the lengthy and complicated process, the office of the surveyor general quickly became overrun with eager settlers and inundated with requests.

In 1729, the Lord Proprietors lost control of the Carolinas, and the Crown and elected assembly took over control of South Carolina.  Because of the huge backlog in requests, changes were made to the procedures for surveying and distributing land. Officials made short cuts in order to move the process along, and it soon became easy for speculators to amass huge amounts of acreage. Settlers began to eschew the practice of surveying altogether and simply mark boundaries themselves by cutting notches in trees.  Between 1731 and 1738 over one million acres were added to the tax rolls.

While land fever was running rampant in both the Carolinas, in 1730 governors of North and South Carolina agreed to meet in order to decide the official boundary line between the states. They came to an agreement of where the boundary would lie, but it still needed to be surveyed and mapped. In 1734 three commissioners were chosen by the governments to survey the proposed line. The problem was none of the men chosen had any experience in surveying. The governor of South Carolina, Robert  Johnson, insisted that at least of the men chosen be trained in surveying.  The initial surveying party that set out was woefully under equipped for such an expedition, and returned after only seven weeks having surveyed only a short distance. The second team got much further, but still did not complete the assignment.  The matter of the North/South Carolina boundary had to be put on hold because of the French and Indian Wars. There were attempts to redraw and finish the 1734-36 line, but the efforts were plagued by mistakes and issues of where the Native American Catawba lands would lie.  Finally, in 1813, the two states settled the matter by getting William Richardson Davie, both a native of South Carolina, and a former North Carolina governor, to lead a survey party that would establish the point known as “old North Corner” and definitively set the boundaries between the two states.

As one of the earliest settlements in the New World, it is no surprise that South Carolina has such a rich history in land surveying.

Charles Lee Iner, RLS
February 2009