Laurens County, South Carolina Wills, 1784-1840

By: Colleen Elliott, Pub. 1988, Reprinted 2014, 356 pages, Index, ISBN #0-89308-606-1.

Laurens County was one of the major paths of migration into South Carolina as well as from S.C. to Georgia, Alabama and points west. This book contains the names of more than 34,000 persons mentioned in these records, which include wills, proven dates of wills, estate inventories, appraisals and sales, purchasers at these sales, gifts of slaves to individuals not in estate settlements, guardianship decrees, contesting of wills, executorship's revoked and their replacements, remarried widows naming new spouse, heirs vs. executors cases, in-depth instructions for "unfortunate children", names of persons from other counties, and states in some cases, and clues to where the family Bible went. This is a veritable gold mine for the genealogist because in many cases this may be the only place where a person is found mentioned in the Laurens County records.