Hi List members: For those of you that may be using the document I transcribed and posted last night, there is a problem with one of the descriptions. I was contacted by Ms. Louise Pettus, one of our local historians, and the text of her email follows. Her descriptions of the WAXHAWS mentioned in the text are far more correct and accurate that the document itself. I am going to send the item to Ellen Schuster at the CDGS so she can file it as an addendum to the document in question. For those of you researching the Waxhaws, Lancaster, etc. this correction is especially important: WAXHAW TOWNSHIP - ..was often referred to as a county. It was formed into LANCASTER in 1785 and included [present day] KERSHAW. It had 2 county seats, Camden and Lancaster. Most of the records at Lancaster were burned by General Sherman. Some records scattered over Camden Dist. and a few can be found in Mecklenburg and Anson Counties of North Carolina. >From Louise: I respectfully disagree with much of the above statement. The Waxhaws (the township came about AFTER Lancaster was a county) was a community, the second settlement in upcountry South Carolina. I have never seen it written that Waxhaw Township was ever referred to as a county--it is true that much more has been written about the Waxhaws prior to the Revolution than other parts of the county but that is because it produced famous people like Andrew Jackson, Gen. William R. Davie, Gov. Stephen Miller, etc. The first settlers came in 1751only the Long Canes settlement was earlier. The Old Waxhaw Presbyterian Church was the first church in the upcountry (1755) and many famous people are buried in the churchyard. So, the Waxhaws merited attention but its SC limits were to the town of Lancaster to the south, 12 Mile Creek (the boundary with the Catawba Indian reservation) to the north and an uncertain boundary line with NC before 1772 which was drawn as it is now in 1813. The Catawba river is the western boundary of the Waxhaws and the rest of the county south of the Catawba Indian Land. South Carolina judicial districts were formed in 1768. One of the judicial districts was Camden. In 1785, when the State of South Carolina came into being, Camden District was divided into 7 counties: Clarendon, Richland, Fairfield, Claremont, Lancaster, Chester and York (including the "New Acquisition"). Kershaw County came about in 1791 formed out of the counties of Lancaster, Claremont, Fairfield and Richland counties with Camden as its county seat. Kershaw never had two county seats. The town of Kershaw was partly in Lancaster County and partly in Kershaw County until some time in the 1950s when the county lines were redrawn and the town of Kershaw was entirely in Lancaster County (done mostly in order to put the school district in one county). General Sherman's troops burned the probate court records but the deeds and surveyor's records survive along with some of the records of the Court of Common Pleas and General Sessions.