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In my work with the colonial plats in the Orangeburgh District area of South Carolina it has been rare to come across a plat drawing that shows a house location. Today’s cluster of plats at Cattle Creek and Sandy Run  included one that indicates approximately where William Hart’s house was located below Orangeburgh Township.

Berry, Clark, Funchess (Fonteus), Grew, Hart, Lambright, Staley, Wood

These eleven tracts (numbers 5 and 10 were for the same land) were surveyed over a nineteen year period by three different surveyors. George Strother did the last six plats and included some details about paths (indicated by red arrows) and the location of “Mr. Hart’s House.”

The path shown on plats 7, 8, and 9 corresponds well with what is currently known as Banbury Drive. The path shown on plat 6, leading to “Mr. Hart’s House,” does not seem to exist in any modern form. The house was drawn just off the edge of the tract on plat 6 and is shown on the drawing above in an approximate location. (Note: Bowman Branch Highway did not exist until the 20th century but is labeled on the map above to help identify the area.)

Plat number 5 was surveyed for Henry Wood in April 1767 by John Mitchell. George Strother resurveyed the same tract eighteen months later for William Hart (plat number 10). Strother indicated in the text of the plat drawing that it was the same land surveyed for Wood.

Plat number 7 was first surveyed in July 1767 for Philip Lambright. He probably never took out the grant for the land as it was certified twenty years later for Peter Stalley in September 1787. Both of the Berry plats (numbers 8 and 9) reference Lambright as the adjoining owner.

While looking at some later maps of this area, I noticed an interesting name. The 1913 soil survey map of the eastern portion of Orangeburgh District shows a community called Lambrick  in this vicinity. While recently re-reading David Gavin’s diary, I noticed that he frequently referred to tracts of land by their original owners, regardless of who may have currently owned them. Is Lambrick perhaps a corrupted reference to Lambright? Do any of my readers have any other information on the name Lambrick in this vicinity?

As an interesting aside, notice that this soil survey map did not show the configuration of Cattle Creek and Sandy Run as accurately as the topographic map does. On the topographic map notice that after Sandy Run flows west for a short distance it then runs parallel to Cattle Creek briefly before flowing into Cattle Creek. Google Earth will confirm that the topographic map is more accurate.

Back to Mr. Hart, the owner of the house … William Hart first appeared in the Giessendanner Records when he married Sarah Young on October 3, 1750. He was described as “of the Congarees” by Rev. John Giessendanner but apparently settled below Orangeburgh Township after his marriage. Two of his children were baptized by Rev. Giessendanner in the 1750s. His daughter Grace married John Wood. In 1785 John and Grace sold 250 acres of her father’s land to Sebastian Funchess. [1]  The tract they sold was the one labeled number 3 on my map above and probably was the location of “Mr. Hart’s House.”

[1] Brent Holcomb, South Carolina Deed Abstracts, 1783-1788 (Columbia: SCMAR, 1996), page 340.

For a PDF copy of the plat drawing click this link:

Colonial Plats at Cattle Creek and Sandy Run

Today’s posting is the fifth in what will eventually be six entries that map the plats laid out in the 20,000 acres originally reserved for Orangeburgh Township. (The postings can be reviewed collectively by clicking on the Tag for Orangeburgh Township in the right-hand column of this page. The group of fifteen plats in today’s post covers much of the modern city of Orangeburg.

Twelve of these tracts were laid out over a three day period in October 1735 by Deputy Surveyor George Haig. Two plats, laid out in 1757, were taken from the area that had been reserved as the commons for Orangeburgh Township. William Mitchell’s 1768 survey included the area of the town lots. My second book contains an entire chapter about the town lots.

Anyone studying this map in detail and comparing it with the map showing the plats along Lower Caw Caw Swamp will notice that I have shifted this group of plats very slightly to the southeast from where they should adjoin those other surveys. Again, remember that the boundary lines of these plats are not precisely accurate, due primarily to the discrepancies between the surveyor’s drawing of the plat and what he actually marked on the terrain. You will also notice a good bit of spelling idiosyncrasies regarding the names on the plats. My first book has an appendix dealing with these name variations.

Felder, Giegleman, Mitchell, Piercy, Pioran, Reigh, Rhyman, Roth, Rowe, Sackweiller, Simmon, Stroman, Wern, Wurtzer

For a PDF copy of this map, click here:

Additional Orangeburgh Township Plats

Orangeburgh District was created in 1769 as one of the seven original districts of South Carolina. It covered a huge part of the state, encompassing 4,540 of South Carolina’s 31,189 square miles. When the first Federal census was taken in 1790 the district was divided into a north part and a south part, each covered by one enumerator. The dividing line between the two areas followed no designated jurisdictional lines but ran along the North Fork of the Edisto River (where the North and South Fork came together) to the village of Orangeburg. From there it crossed the North Edisto and followed the road that ran to Ninety Six between the North and South Forks of the Edisto.

So, if your ancestor appeared in the 1790 census of Orangeburgh District, how can you tell more specifically where he lived? This is the first in a series of postings I will be doing about household locations in the 1790 census, similar to those I am doing for other early enumerations. I have assigned household numbers for this first census, similar to what I’ve used for the 1800 through 1820 and 1840 Orangeburgh District enumerations.  I have not yet published a listing of the 1790 census with the household numbers but plan to do so once I identify the areas that later became Barnwell and Lexington Districts. Bear with me; this is a big task but I have to start somewhere!

The household locations shown on the drawing below are based on plats that were located relative to the 1845 survey shown on my blog entry of February 20, 2012. Other survey plats in the neighborhood confirm the locations of these but have not been included in the drawing to keep it easier to read.

Connor, McInnis, Platt

Note: Polk Swamp was originally called Poke Swamp, through at least 1825 when Mill’s Atlas was published. The name evolved to Polk Swamp by the early twentieth century (Bowman 1921 15 minute quadrangle topographic map).