maps

The 1790 South Carolina federal census was prolonged into 1792. It employed 7 existing districts, shown as colored areas on the map. Within these districts were differing census subdivisions, shown as black lines and lettering. The white lines show the present day county boundaries.

Ninety-Six, Camden, and Cheraws Districts used their county subdivisions.
Georgetown District employed the parish bounds: Prince Fredericks Parish; Prince George - Winyaw Parish; All Saints Parish. Their counties of 1790 never functioned.
Charleston District employed parish bounds. Its counties of 1790 never functioned.
Beaufort District was not enumerated by subdivisions in 1790. Its counties of 1790 never functioned.
Orangeburg District had four active counties, but the census enumerator ignored them. For the 1790 census, Orangeburg was divided into North and South, shown as a dotted line on the map. This division was the road to the forks of the Edisto, from Edgefield County to the town of Orangeburg, and then down the North Edisto and Edisto to the Charleston District line.

Mills 1825 Atlas - (abstracted from an article by Victoria Proctor)

In 1826 Robert Mills submitted to the South Carolina State Senate a copy of his Atlas. It was the first atlas of an American state. Several dozen individuals had worked since 1815 to complete the Atlas. At least twenty surveyors had prepared careful surveys of every District. As Mills later stated, South Carolina was "now acknowledged to be in advance of her Sister States ...". In his speech given at the 6th International Conference on the History of Cartography (7-11 September, 1975), Walter W. Ristow noted that Maine and New York published state atlases in 1829 and that no other state published another one for thirty-five years.

The Atlas includes maps of each of the then-existing Districts in South Carolina. Each District map shows place names, waterbodies, roads, and other useful information. Plantations, farms, mills, ferries, and more are shown usually using the name of the owner.
There were actually four essential works produced. First, there were surveys made of each District between 1817 and 1821. Second, there were some district maps produced between 1818 and 1821 from some of the surveys. Third, in the fall of 1821 the first 50 copies of Wilson's Map of the State were printed and another 2,500 were printed in April 1882. Fourth, Mills worked to produce the Atlas between 1823 and 1825 using the earlier works as the basis. The Atlas was published in 1825 and first distributed in 1826.

The first three projects were funded and controlled by the State. However, the sales of the State Map were disappointing. As a result, the State Legislature did not accept proposals to produce an Atlas made in 1821 and 1822 by the Board of Public Works. Mills was one of the two paid Commissioners of the Board of Public Works. The Board of Public Works was abolished in 1822 and replaced with a Superintendent of Public Works.

In 1823, Mills requested permission to privately produce an atlas. On 19 December, 1823, the Legislature ratified a contract for Mills to produce the Atlas. The original contract called for the State to receive "at least" 12 free atlases and to purchase fifty more at a total cost of $600. By December 1825, a new contract had been made and the State was to receive 80 atlases for $1,200.
Mills charged $16 per copy to regular subscribers. The number of Atlases printed for the first edition is unknown. At least one thousand separate district maps were printed.

Mills worked on the Atlas from about December 1823, when the Legislature authorized him to use the State-sponsored district surveys as the basis for his maps, until about mid-1825, when he must have submitted the final versions in time for them to be engraved, printed, bound, and sent back by January 1826. He thus worked approximately one and one-half years on the Atlas. Since 'Statistics' was copyrighted on 28 November 1826, he had to have been working on this volume of more than eight-hundred pages at the same time as the Atlas. He still had to sell the copies himself, and distribution probably occupied him for at least two more years.

By 1980 there had been seven printings of the Atlas. Mills himself reprinted a rare edition of about 1838. The third printing was in 1938 by Lucy Hampton Bostick and Fant H. Thornley. The fourth printing was in 1965 by Robert Pearce Wilkins and John D. Keels, Jr. The fifth printing was in 1979 by A. Press, Inc. The sixth printing was in 1979 and is still available at the time of this writing. It is 19 x 25" and is bound in a leather-like book to enable the removal of individual maps. The cost (as of May 1998) is $75.00 plus $5.00 shipping. It is published by Sandlapper Publishing, PO Box 730, Orangeburg, SC 29115 (or 800-849-7263 or sandlapper@hotmail.com).

The seventh printing was in 1980 by the Southern Historical Press, c/o The Rev. S. Emmett Lucas Jr., P.O. Box 738, Easely, SC 29640. The 7th edition was dedicated to the South Carolina Historical Society, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Gignilliat, and Mr. Gene Waddell. Gene Waddell wrote the introduction for the seventh printing.

The source for much of the above information was: "Mills Atlas of the State of South Carolina 1825", 1980 Reprint Edition (Introduction by Gene Waddell), Southern Historical Press.