Golding / Golden / Goulding et al Family History on Facebook
1771 Aug 15 – William Golden received a plat for 250 acres surveyed in Berkley County, which at that time ran from the Atlantic coast to the Appalachian mountains.
Mentioned within the document: John Bremar (Surveyor General), James Gaugin (owner of the land bounding to the east), John Monk (owner of land bounding on the south of the plat) and Joseph Wright (Surveyor). The land had passing through it the Little River and Sandy Run Creek.
Today, if you search ‘Little River, South Carolina’ you will find that it is a river that runs parallel to the South Carolina coast, near to what is today Berkley County, just north of Myrtle Beach. That did not seem appropriate to me since the land being given as grants at this time was for land in western South Carolina (100 acres + 50 acres per additional person in the family).
At first it appears that the map has latitude and longitude shown but these markings do not match South Carolina’s Lat/Long location.
Since the land plat lists some of the property owners that have adjacent land then I tried to track them down.
- James Gaugin — has land on the eastern boundary. Can find no record for Gaugin.
- John Monk — has land on the southwestern boundary of William Golden’s land plat. John Monk turns out to be a major land owner in the Little River area, although his land is referred to as being in Craven County, which is in the northeastern part of the state. This is still unhelpful as there is still no specific location of where Monk’s property was located … and as it turns out it was not anywhere near Craven County, and it straddled the Colleton-Berkeley County lines.
Search for things in context! An important hint came to me by reading other land grant documents of the era. Some of the land grants after 1772 begin referring to ‘Little River Saluda’.
Little River, aka known as the Little Saluda River, runs right through downtown Laurens, South Carolina and throughout several counties in the area.
Using Google Maps I followed the Little River until I found a Sandy Creek intersection located at 34.249009, -81.817420.
FINAL QUESTION: Which William Golden or Golding was this? William Golding of Orange County, Virginia (husband of Elizabeth Foster) moved his family to the area circa 1771. He passed away in 1782 at Ninety Six, Greenwood County, South Carolina, which is just miles to the west of the 1771/72 land grant to William Golden. We DO NOT know where our William and Nellie Golden were prior to 1783-1790. They would eventually end up in Edgefield as property owners in 1792; Edgefiled is itself not far from the 1771/72 land grant to William Golden.
SOURCE: This land plat is in the SC Archives; see Series: S213184 Volume: 0016 Page: 00166.
You are welcome to add to or to correct this story by contacting: Bill Golden, Norfolk1956@gmail.com
BTW – I look forward to sharing your stories, photos and in-search-of quests. Contact me at the email address above.