My last few articles take a deep dive into analyzing the connection between Jess and Josiah Stallings. I’m going to briefly digress and fast forward in time to Josiah’s death. The last time I talked about that was to tell you that he was shot in the face by his slave in 1836. He died without a will and there are quite a few post-death records with comprehensive details of his estate. The records have been a good test of how well my research will hold up to the standard that expects us to weigh the validity of a source based on several criteria, including who provided the information and how close in time to the event the information was recorded. There are so many details I could dissect here, but the main purpose of this post is to share my transcription of one of the earliest records.

This is a Petition for Sale of Real Estate. The petition was filed in the Court of Common Pleas. These petitions are not available online and are not indexed online. They are also not available at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History. As far as I know they are only available at the Barnwell Courthouse in Barnwell, South Carolina. Side note: If anyone is reading this who lives near there and would like to do some digging, please let me know!

The petition lists all the pieces of property that Josiah owned at the time of his death and who purchased each parcel. This is an extremely important document, as this information was recorded within months of Josiah’s death. A case was filed later in the Court of Equity that also lists the property and the purchasers. That case was filed in about 1852. More on all that later, but it could be that the information in this record is more accurate than in the later case.

I transcribed the document from photos a very nice lady took for me. Because I don’t know the order that the pages were found in the bundle, I simply noted “[page]” at the beginning of each new page. One of the photos was too blurry to read.