Help with Colonial plats

[PalmettoPride]

I recently gained permission to detect a 460+ acre tract of land and have been finding 18th and 19th century relics there. I am researching the site with an ultimate goal of locating old home sites or other structures. I found images of the plats for the original deeding of lots in the area, in the 1730's.

I would like to be able to plot the boundaries of the tracts that are in the area that I am detecting so that I can determine which ones were part of the current tract. I need help converting the latitude and longitude coordinates on the plat to a format that I can use to plot them on a current map. Each of the borders of the tracts on the plats have numbers like:

"NE67.xx.xx"
"SE23.xx.xx"

How would I go about converting the coordinates?

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Diving for Pleasure and Treasure - Grab it through Amazon!

[DBANDGB]

cant answer your question but how do you find the old plats? thanks

 

[PalmettoPride]

The property is in South Carolina. I found the plat images inline at the SC Dept. Of Archives & History web site. They have a searchable database.

 

[PalmettoPride]

Here is the link:
http://www.archivesindex.sc.gov/onlinearchives/

 

[DBANDGB]

thanks for the quick answer. now i have to figure how to use it.

 

[PalmettoPride]

The trick is you have to know the name of a landowner; that's the hard part. Once you have a name just type it in & if there are records in the database the person's name will pop up as you type.

Don't narrow the search any; leave it set to "All."

 

[rovnrbl53]

if you have existing lat/long co-ordinates, not sure why you'd need to convert them. You can go out to the USGS website and locate a topo map for that site and purchase online. I think it's about $12 per copy now or something like bookfinder.com or ebay may have them for less. The topos have both lat/long and UTM co-ordinates on them. You should be able to get reasonably close just using the plat co-ordinates and transposing on the topo or you can do some interpolation to get closer.

There's also converters on line which enable you to go from degrees/minutes/seconds to UTM and vice versa or use digital d/m/s. Just search for what you're looking for. You can also try mytopo.com....there used to be a better site but mytopo bought them it appears and screwed it up. With a handheld GPS you can punch the co-ordinates in and head right to where you want to go.

 

[flinthunter]

Are you sure the plat is marked in latitude and longitude? I could be wrong but isn't latitude and longitude marked only as N, S, E, or W and not NE. or SE.

 

[PalmettoPride]

No I'm not sure. Wgat could the numbers mean?

 

[flinthunter]

I think they are bearing and distance numbers. Possibly the distance and direction of a property line from a fixed point. If you can make a copy or even a rough drawing of a small section of the plat map your county tax assessors office should be able to help decipher its meaning. Here are a couple sites with a little information...
Plat Coordinates - GPS Coordinates? - ADVrider ...

 

[PalmettoPride]

Thanks

 

[PalmettoPride]

I've noticed that some of the Colonial plats have an "X" marked on them. Anyone know the significance of this? Does that mark a house?

 

[huntsman53]

You might find the website below helpful in coverting Land Plat Survey plots to Latitude and Longitude. Also, the County Clerk's Office for the County that the land is in, can usually help you with the conversions as well who currently owns the land. Also, if you have a street or road address, you can Google these and usually find a Realestate Plot of the land as well as additional info on it.

How to Find the Longitude and Latitude of Parcel Corners


Frank

 

[hikingthehills]

I think they are bearing and distance numbers. Possibly the distance and direction of a property line from a fixed point. If you can make a copy or even a rough drawing of a small section of the plat map your county tax assessors office should be able to help decipher its meaning. Here are a couple sites with a little information...
Plat Coordinates - GPS Coordinates? - ADVrider ...

Correct.