Genealogy Travel: Lancaster County, South Carolina

Our days in Kiawah Island, SC were over. I packed the seashells I had collected on the beach. My brother packed his drift wood. We emptied the refrigerator and took out the trash and packed all our things back into my car. One last walk on the beach and we were on our way to North Carolina to visit my son and his wife.



Rather than take a direct route, we took side trip to the Lancaster County Library. I had visited their website in advance & knew I wanted to spend time in the Caroliniana Room which “holds books, periodicals, maps, and vertical files. These materials are in open stacks for easy access for visitors.”

They list these materials:

o Confederate Veteran 1893 - 1932, 40 bound volumes, indexed. An Index to the Magazine is available online at The Library of Virginia.
o Lancaster City Directories, 1954 to present (not inclusive)
o Lancaster County Maps
o Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, Series I - IV, 130 volumes. These are also available online and searchable at Cornell University.
o Periodicals
o South Carolina Census Indexes 1790-1870
o South Carolina Legislative Manuals, 1934 to present
o Vertical file for General Topics
o Vertical file for Surnames, A - L, M - Z

I was looking for evidences of my Faulkenberry/Fortenberry family. My third great grandfather, William Jasper Fortenberry had been born there in 1772; married Violette Kennington and fathered six of their ten children in Lancaster County. After that William & family moved to Mississippi.

The first thing I found was : Criminger, Adrianne Fortenberry. The Fortenberry Families of Southern Mississippi. South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1984.I own this book and have used it many times. Finding it meant I was on the right track. On the same shelf I found The Faulkenberry Family by Peggy Elliott Faulkenberry, a spiral bound book that traces the family back to Germany, explains the change from Faulkenberry to Fortenberry and details many branches of the family.

I am usual alone on these research trips but my brother was with me for this stop. He started by photocopying pages for me, then uncovered Census Books, and was soon showing those first signs of genealogy addiction. Our mother had loved history and had always taken us to historic sights whenever we traveled. My6 brother said it was great to think of our ancestors as being a part of that history.

In the end we had copied pages from these sources:

· Ellis, Joanne. Lancaster County, SC Cemetery Data. 1995.
· Ellis, Evelyn, and Joanne Ellis. Lancaster County, SC Cemetery Data. Volume II. Lancaster, South Carolina: DD, Inc., 1997.
· Heads of Families at the First Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1790; South Carolina. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1908.
· Jackson, Ronald Vern, and Gary Ronald Teeples. South Carolina 1810 Census. Bountiful, Utah: Accelerated Indexing Systems, Inc., 1976.
· Jackson, Ronald Vern, and Gary Ronald Teeples. South Carolina 1840 Census. Bountiful, Utah: Accelerated Indexing Systems, Inc., 1977.
· Jeffcoat, Frances Reeves. Lancaster District south Carolina 1850 Census. South Carolina: 1984.
· Moss, Bobby Gilmmore. Roster of South Carolina Patriots in the American Revolution. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1983.
· White, Virgil D. Genealogical Abstracts of Revolutionary War Pension Files. Volume II: F - M. Waynesboro, Tennessee: The National Historical Publishing Company, 1991.
· White, Virgil D. Index to War of 1812 Pension Files. Volume I: A - F. Waynesboro, Tennessee: The National Historical Publishing Company, 1989.

The librarian checked the index to the Perry Belle Hough Collection for me, looking for Faulkenberry & brought out a slim folder. Only two items were inside: handwritten notes on land ownerships by Faulkenberrys and a 1956 newspaper clipping for J R Faulkenberry’s obituary.

I would definitely return to this library because there were other materials we did not have time to look at more closely.