South Carolina African American Records to Be Published Online

Dick Eastman's Online Newsletter had the following article:

The following announcement was written by Lowcountry Africana and The South
Carolina Department of Archives and History:
Lowcountry Africana and The South Carolina Department of Archives and History today announced plans to digitize and publish freely online more than 25,000 historic documents of interest to researchers of African American genealogy and history.Under the new agreement, Colonial and Charleston, South Carolina estate inventories dated 1732-1867 will be digitized and indexed in detail, including the names of more than 30,000 slaves. Inventories of estates in early South Carolina probate records often listed slaves in family groupings. They also detail the material possessions so important for researchers of social and cultural history. "South
Carolina has one of the richest sets of early government records of any of the original states,” said Charles Lesser, Senior Archivist at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History.” This new cooperative effort will revolutionize access to an especially important segment of those records," concluded Lesser.

If you wish to read the entire article in Eastman's Newsletter, you can find it at the following address: http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2009/02/south-carolina-african-american-records-to-be-published-online.html