The Colonial Records of South Carolina

The Journal of the Commons House of Assembly

October 6, 1757 - January 24, 1761
Terry W. Lipscomb, Editor

From the Preface
The new Commons House that convened in October 1757 showed no inclination to resume the fight over legislative privilege that had inflamed relations with the Council, exasperated royal governors, and stalled public business. As great military events transpired on the North American continent and elsewhere, the political climate changed. The British Crown’s financial demands on South Carolina dampened the feud between the Commons House and His Majesty’s Council. But it set the governor and Commons House at odds, and the colony’s politics fell into a monotonous pattern of petty bickering.

The task that confronted Governor William Henry Lyttelton might have frustrated him even if he had been a really suave and gifted politician.  By the time the newly-elected legislators assembled in Charlestown’s State House, the city contained over 1,700 British troops—Royal Americans, provincials, and
Highlanders—sent to defend the southern frontier against French incursions.

Buried among the financial dealings, an interesting cast of characters weaves in and out of the legislative minutes. Various personalities who would become prominent in the backcountry and in the American Revolution appear in these pages—some of them for the first time. Andrew Williamson, Patrick Calhoun, John Stuart, Richard Richardson, and William Thomson all appear in passing references.

For genealogists, this journal’s interest lies not merely in great men, famous men, and interesting men, but also in the multitude of ordinary men and women who appear in its pages. Repeated expeditions to the Indian frontier led to vast requisitions for supplies. All vouchers went through the yearly legislative audits, and the clerks recorded the names of many obscure Germans or other backcountry settlers who supplied wagons, horses, or provisions. Their accounts provide a heretofore untapped source for family research.

The 1757–1760 General Assembly dissolved on August 23, 1760, by the lieutenant governor’s proclamation, but this published volume contains additional minutes for the short assembly that ran from October 6, 1760, until January 24, 1761. One week later, official dispatches reported the death of King George II, and—according to Bull’s interpretation—automatically dissolved the legislature. Unofficial word of the king’s death had already arrived, and the members of the Commons House are said to have attended the January meetings in their mourning clothes.

The 1760–1761 sessions produced only thirty-six manuscript pages, which the clerk appended to the volume containing the preceding Commons House Journal. In this published edition, they provide a useful continuity of subject matter, as the Cherokee War became almost the sole topic for debate.

The text of this book has been taken from volume 32 (456 pages) and volume 33 (416 pages) of the original manuscripts in the South Carolina Department of Archives and History. A few of the papers included in the 1757-61 Commons House Journal were contemporaneously printed in the South Carolina Gazette, but most of the material in this volume has never before been published. Another manuscript of this journal exists in the British Public Record Office, and the microfilm copy of it has been checked whenever there seemed to be errors or omissions in the Archives manuscript. Comparison has also been made with fragments of rough journals extant in the South Carolina Archives. The clerk’s rough drafts exist from May 12, 1758 to February 3, 1759, and from May 28, 1760 to July 14, 1760.