Historical Center Of York Country

Historical Center of York Countyn210 East Jefferson St.nYork, South Carolina 29745nnYork County Court Records, 1786 – ca. 1962nnAmazing! How could I have spent so many years researching my family history and ignoring valuable information that might be available in courthouse resources. Here are all these archived official state and local documents. Maybe my ancestors owned land. Maybe they had a dispute over a financial transaction. Maybe they were a witness to a crime. Maybe they were the victim of a crime. There are many ways they may have interacted with their local courthouse. Thus their name would be recorded in some official court document.nnSeveral months ago I volunteered at the Historical Center of York County, South Carolina. My first activity there was to research information about people that donated historical collections or the people that originally created the documents and articles in a donated collection. As I was conducting this research, I started learning about the early York County court records that are part of the historical collections at the Historical Center. I was amazed! Here were yellowed hand written papers that were created as early as 1768. Some were faded. Some were starting to crumble and fall apart. Here were names and sometimes signatures of York County residents that might have been my ancestors.nnThis made me a little sad. My ancestors started settling around Orangeburg County, South Carolina in 1752. What a treasure trove of courthouse documents might be there for me to research and learn more about my earliest ancestors arriving in this country. General Sherman and his troops denied me the opportunity to search through these records when they burned the Orangeburg County Courthouse during the Civil War.nnDescendants of early York County, South Carolina are not denied that opportunity. The early courthouse records are still here. Wow! They still exist. They are available for descendants to access and learn more about their ancestors. There are so many documents. How would a descendant find out whether one or more of their ancestors was involved in a court case and mentioned in one or more of these documents? That thought revealed another awesome piece of information. There are several volunteers at the Historical Center that have been reading these documents, page by page, extracting names and recording these names in an Excel Spreadsheet Finding Aid. And they have been doing this extraction process for over 14 years. Can you imagine the tedious process of reading a yellowed, fading, almost impossible to read, original handwritten document, with some cursive letters that are different that our current cursive letters? These volunteers should have a memorial erected and dedicated to them.nnThese early records still exist, names have been extracted, and are still being extracted. There are still many court records still sitting on the shelves awaiting their turn. These amazing volunteers keep up their quest to find and make names searchable for the descendants of early York County, South Carolina settlers. What an awesome legacy they have created.nnIf you have ancestors that lived in York County, South Carolina, contact the Historical Center. Find out if your ancestors are involved in one or more court cases. If they are, you may learn some new information to add to your research, the legacy you are creating, and hopefully leaving behind for your descendants.

Good research resource