Yesterday, Vince and I once again ate a quick lunch at Subway and headed on down to see Trisha at the Edgefield County Archives. I really love this place! I meant to get photos of the room where we sit to go through files but forgot. I did get a couple of photos from the top of the file vault ladder so you could see the wealth of information at our fingertips.
This is along the back wall of the vault. It's a large room with shelves all the way around the wall and two shelving systems back to back in the middle.
The shelves to my left as I'm standing on the ladder. The door to the vault is just to the right of these shelves. It looks kind of puny from here until you realize just how large those books are.
That's an iPhone 4S placed for size reference. Literally, anything you would want to view about Edgefield County all the way back to.....well, a long way....can be found in this room. These are the regular mortgages for land and houses. This is just a very very very small selection of these HUGE books.
And these are a small representation of Chattel Mortgages. "Chattel" is an item of tangible movable or unmovable property except for houses and land. Chattel items during the period Scarlett was built would have been barns, wagons, carriages, horses, cattle, other livestock, and yes, slaves. Often slaves were lumped in with the livestock of a plantation.
See what I mean about finding information on anything and everything here? These are executions. Yep. Executions...and these big books only cover a few years each.
They are thick.....which is scary!
And there are LOTS of them...which is scarier! The stack starts on the lower shelf and rises all the way to the top shelf. If stacked on the floor, I would imagine the pile of books would be 8 or 9 feet tall.
The vault also includes journals, court case records, coroners inquests, photos; it's AMAZING.
The history geek in me was screaming "READ ALL THE THINGS!!!" the whole time I was strolling through the vault, but I had work to do. Last week, my husband, the intrepid Land Nav expert, was strolling through plats and figuring out land marks and measuring devices, and yes, finding the occasional laugh among the serious work! I think he is pretty soon going to have an 1850s map of Ridge Spring with all the home owners laid out in that head of his! While roaming through some titles, he discovered the January 13, 1873 sale of our place by BT Boatwright to Dr. John DuBose.
Gorgeous handwriting, huh?
This week, we really sat down and read the document in detail. While we did not manage to get a price or and exact amount of acreage, we did discover that this transfer mentions the house already being there. Not directly, but old land transfers are pretty easy to decipher if you know the lingo. If it's just land, the title will only state "land". If there are buildings, the title will list "property" and "appurtenances" which this one did. Just below this entry in the title transfer book, there is also a notation made that Sophia Boatwright, wife of BT Boatwright, is giving up "all her right and Claim of Dower" to the premises. Dower is different from Dowry because a dower is a present given to the bride by the groom the day after to wedding. It is meant to sustain the wife in the event of her being widowed. The husband cannot use this property for any reason unless the wife signs a release. If this property was part of her dower, the house would be at least 20 years older as BT and Sophia married on November 15, 1831. Interesting. Another avenue to explore!
The top of the page is BT's sale to Dr. John. The second entry (middle of the page) is Ms. Boatwright's relinquishment of "Right to Dower".
Vince had also discovered last week a title transfer where BT Boatwright had purchased a 120 acre plantation....meaning a working plantation with a house and more than likely a barn and several other outbuildings. We initially thought that this might possibly be what is now our place. Now, BT had no use for another house. He already had his 8,000 square foot mansion not 1/4 of a mile down the road, but he certainly could use the land. BT was very well off and was a slave owner. He grew cotton from what I've learned but I'm sure there were other crops involved. At the time of the purchase of the 120 acre plantation, BT already owned at least 890 + acres. That's a lot of land! While doing the research, we try to think like the person we are researching. So, for a few minutes and using this train of thought, we're BT Boatwright. We're a wealthy land owner, with a large family (6 children!), and we have purchased a plantation right down the road with a house we don't need. A doctor is interested in purchasing that house. What do we do? We section off some small acreage with the house and sell! Then we have a doctor within walking distance in case of emergencies. No hitching up a wagon and loading a sick person up for a drive into town. Nope! The doctor is within a 10 minute walking distance for a human or about a 3 minute trot on horseback. That works out well! This sale took place in 1854, so we're thinking that that is a different piece of property.
My job this week was this....
Court cases.....yay?
I grabbed the listing of all court cases in Edgefield County from the 1830's to the middle of the Civil War to see if I recognized any names. Sometimes, these cases supplied plats of property. None of my principal characters had sued or been sued in this time frame. Bummer. Since I'd been told that some of the cases were quite a hoot to read through, I just grabbed one at random (1242) and decided to see what it was all about. In the vault, each of these cases (and it's accompanying evidence) is in a neatly labeled file folder in a neatly labeled box. Some of these cases take up a whole file box, while most are a few pages. The one I chose was a woman named Miranda suing a relative over some property. She said she'd paid it off as agreed. He said she still owed on it. In the end, she won. In the folder was her evidence she'd paid....
Long division...1858 style! And I had math teachers complain about my messy work!!!
A little loan paperwork from 1848.
After striking out with the court case documents, I decided to try looking at Wills. I knew Sarah had died in 1886 and that Dr. John had survived her about 9 years, so I also knew he inherited the property, but I was hoping there would be a list containing the house. No such luck...but I did find her signature...
Stunning. I love the flowy letters!
At this point, we'd run out of time. We had gotten to talking to Trisha about her gorgeous Greek Revival and just completely lost the rest of our day. Next Wednesday, we dive deeper into this dower mystery. Could there be a listing in the archives of Sophia's dower? Or possibly her dowry? Was this house in existance in 1831? Stay tuned!!
I'll leave you with another gem we found this week.
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