Yesterday, I spent my first day at the Charleston  County
Courthouse looking up deeds and tax maps. I've known that it
was a great source of info, but avoided it for whatever
reasons. I think I just had my hands full gathering info at
the county library (and elsewhere), and hadn't exhausted the
resource (still haven't done so).

They have a History Room (2nd fl., part of the RMC) with old
Deed Record Books. Most of the deeds are on microfilm (if
not, they are in the books). When you find your family
member's name  indexed you take the referenced book and page
numbers to the RMC office (down the hall) to get a copy
made, and if you can not read it you can located it in the
books in the History Room. I looked in the books first to
see if it was in fact a deed that pertained to my family
before getting a copy made.

Another thing I did was locate a property owned by a family
member, then got the Property Card which lists the owners of
the property and how it changed hands, ie. Will, sale, etc.
It's an old fashioned Title Search, if you are familiar with
them.

I went to MAPPING (3rd fl.) at the courthouse. This is where
the maps of property are done for taxing. They have a
website which I am going to check out in a min.
http://www.charlestoncounty.org    You can search for a
name. Then locate a property. If you want to know who else
has owned the property you get a copy of the Property Card
(front and back) from the Auditor's Office (1st fl.). The
one I got had the record #s of 2 Wills used to change hands
of the property and 4 different generations of family
members.

I didn't have an address for the property I was searching,
only a vague idea of where it was located in McClellanville.
So, the helpful man in Mapping found the Tax Map for the
McClellanville area. Now that we had an idea of  which Tax
Map numbers were in that area we did a surname search and
went to the first property with a Tax Map #  in that
area.... and Bingo!

Well, time to go play on the Web!

Janet