South Carolina Databases and Digital Records Online

Research and explore your South Carolina genealogy and family history online with these online South Carolina databases, indexes, and digitized records collections, many of them free!

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Lowcountry Africana

Funded by The Magnolia Plantation Foundation of Magnolia Plantation and Gardens in Charleston, South Carolina, Lowcountry Africana offers a searchable database of primary historical documents plus other resources for researching the family history, culture and heritage of Gullah/Geechee descendants in low country Charleston, Georgia and extreme northeastern Florida.

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The Piedmont Historical Society Records

The Piedmont Historical Society provides transcriptions of a number of South Carolina records, primarily focused on the upstate counties including Abbeville, Anderson, Cherokee, Chester, Edgefiled, Fairfield, Greenville, Greenwood, Laurens, McCormick, Newberry, Oconee, Pickens, Spartanburg, Union and York.

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South Carolina Department of Archives & History Online Records

This free online index of historical records from the SC Archives includes will transcripts (1782 to 1855), plats for state land grants, Confederate pension applications, and other items.

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Greenville County Historical Records

Greenville County, South Carolina, has posted an amazing collection of the county's historical records online in digital format, including deeds, wills, probate records, and district court records. The records are in digital format only, but the indexes (when available) have also been digitized.

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South Caroliniana Library Digital Collections

Historic photographs, broadsides (single page advertisements such as posters and fliers), family papers, Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, and historic newspapers from across the state of South Carolina are online as part of the University of South Carolina Libraries Digital Collections.

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South Carolina Death Indexes 1915-1957

Browse digitized indexes of all Death Index log files from the South Carolina Department of Health's Division of Vital Records. Viewable only with Internet Explorer.

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South Carolina Deaths 1915-1955

This free index to South Carolina death records from FamilySearch includes digitized images of the death records from 1915 to 1943. An index to South Carolina death records from 1944 to 1955 is in a separate database.

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Charleston County Archival Room

The online Archival Room has opened with several hundred digitized plats of Charleston area plantations prior to 1900, along with McCrady Plats and Gaillard Plats. Plans are to eventually digitize older deeds, mortgages and other documents and put them online as well (more recent deeds are currently searchable online through the Register of Deeds Office).

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Richland County Online Search

Richland County, which includes the state capital Columbia, offers online searching of marriage licenses filed from July 1911 through the present and estates filed from 1983 to the present.

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Horry County Historical Society Records

Marriage records, obituaries, cemetery records, death certificates, bible records, wills, high school family class lists, land records, wills, and other genealogical records are freely available online from the Horry County Historical Society

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Lexington County Probate Court Indexes

Browse estate indexes (1865 to 1994) and marriage indexes (1911 to 1987) through the Probate Court and deed index books (1949 to 1984) through the Register of Deeds.

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Beaufort County Newspaper Obitary Index (Beaufort, Jasper and Hampton Counties)

This free online index from the Beaufort County Library covers obituaries appearing in newspapers of the old Beaufort District of South Carolina (Beaufort, Jasper, and Hampton counties) from 1862-1984. Includes links and information for how to order a copy of the actual full-text obituary.

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Camden Archives & Museum

The Camden Archives & Museum is recognized throughout South Carolina as having one of the best research libraries pertaining to genealogical research. It houses a diverse collection of books, microfilm, maps, files, periodicals and other material which pertains to the north-central section of South Carolina formerly recognized as the old Camden District (encompassing the present-day counties of Clarendon, Sumter, Lee, Kershaw, Lancaster, York, Chester, Fairfield, and northern Richland County). Their online resources include an obituary index and will index for Kershaw County.

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Charleston County Probate Court Search

The Charleston County probate court offers an online search feature for marriage licenses from the year 1879 to the present. There is also a searchable index to estate/wills and conservator/guardianship records. Only the 1983 cases to the present cases will be able to give you details about the estate. Choose "history" from the dropdown to search an index to older records, some going back to the 1800s. You'll have to pull the originals of these on microfilm to learn more.

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Powell, Kimberly. "South Carolina Genealogy Online." ThoughtCo, Aug. 29, 2020, thoughtco.com/south-carolina-genealogy-online-1422398. Powell, Kimberly. (2020, August 29). South Carolina Genealogy Online. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/south-carolina-genealogy-online-1422398 Powell, Kimberly. "South Carolina Genealogy Online." ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/south-carolina-genealogy-online-1422398 (accessed June 8, 2023).