For the writer York County is unique because he must go back into the fourth generation of his ancestors (the "great-greats") to find one who was born somewhere else!
When Robert Mills wrote his Statistics of South Carolina (1823), in describing the conspicuous features of York District he remarked on the unusual attention paid to the dead. York District was even then noteworthy for the large cemeteries, whit most graves marked by stone monuments, adjoining the Presbyterian churches. These picturesque churchyards, at Bethesda, Bethel, Sharon, Bethany, Beth-Shiloh, Olivet, or Smyrna, would still inspire Thomas Grey to write more elegies. On the other hand one finds in York County fewer private family burying grounds. There are, of course, forgotten cemeteries in the woods, but these usually mark the site of a defunct church. The cultural pattern in York was to bury the dead in the consecrated soil of a churchyard: a considerable boon to the genealogist!
When on examines the probate records of York County, it will be noticed that in the pre-newspaper days the Citation to Kindred and Creditors will have a note stating that the Citation was read from the pulpit of one of the churches, with the clergyman's signature. When that bit of data is discovered, by all means go the the cemetery of that church! This is a quick and easy way to locate tombstones. It is also a good way to sort out different families of the same surname, such as the Bethel, Sharon, or Neely's Creek Campbells, or the Bethesda, Beersheba, or Bullock's Creek Loves.
York has an outstanding and virtually complete corpus of county records which begins in the year 1786. One remarkable record group in that court house is the collection of records of the Court of Equity, recently laminated and a joy to use.
The settlement of York County, however, ante-dated the erection of the county by nearly two generations, and so it is necessary for the diligent researcher to explore other county records scattered through two states. When the earliest settlers arrived around 1750, there was no boundary established between the Carolinas. Although the two provinces were disputing their respective claims to the region, the area was generally supposed to belong to North Carolina and to be part of the frontier county of Anson. Anson County, NC still has its seat at Wadesboro, and the Register of Deeds there has frequently answered inquiries by mail.
Shortly thereafter, the western part of Anson was set off as Mecklenburg County, with a courthouse still in Charlotte, and what is now York belonged to Mecklenburg. Mecklenburg County deeds are being published in the 1974 issue of the Georgia Genealogical Magazine, abstracted by Brent Holcomb. In 1768, the part of Mecklenburg west of the Catawba River was cut off to form Tryon County, NC. Tryon soon had a courthouse located in the present York County, between the town of Clover and the village of Bethany. The approximate site of the Courthouse has a highway marker placed by the York County Historical Commission. Tryon County was eventually dismembered into the North Carolina counties of Lincoln and Rutherford, and the Tryon records inherited by the new county of Lincoln, whose seat is still at Lincolnton, NC. The Minutes of the Tryon County Court, which mention many York County notables, are currently being published in the Bulletin of the Old Tryon County Genealogical Society.
In 1772, the boundary question was settled and what became York County was thrown into South Carolina. Tryon County lost its courthouse and perhaps a majority of its population. South Carolina gained a well-populated piece of territory, peopled almost entirely by Scotch-Irish pioneers. Within what became York County, there were already four Presbyterian churches, and by the yyear 1800 there would be four or five more. Although Baptists, Lutherans, Anglicans, and Quakers were nearby in both Carolinas, these groups were conspicuously absent in York County.
When York County became a part of South Carolina in 1772, it found itself in a Province of rather different traditions in local government. North Carolina, like Virginia, had from a very early time a system of strong county courts,. These county courts, consisting of several Justices of the Peace, or "Gentlemen Justices", would sit together and hold court once a quarter. The Court would record deeds, prove wills, grant letters of administration, bind out orphans, license taverns, ferries, and grist-mills, and compile records of inestimable worth to genealogists. But South Carolina in 1772, a city-state ruled from Charleston, had only nominal counties, and York fell into the ill-defined hunk of territory called Craven County. Equally meaningless was the fact that it belonged to the Parish of St. Mark: we may be very sure that the Anglican presence in York County at that time was negligible if not nil. The only hint of a Church of England clergyman in the pre-Revolutionary York County was the chaplain who accompanied Governor Tryon when he traveled through in the 1760's to survey the Indian boundary.
Under the new government of South Carolina, a resident of York County area had to travel to the district capital at Camden to enter a suit at law. To record a deed, prove a will, or obtain letters of administration, he had to make the long trip to Charlestown. But remote from Charlestown as it was, some records from York County were recorded there which genealogist should not overlook. At least two wills written by York County residents were recorded by the Ordinary in Charlestown, those of John Bratton and Charity Kerr. Surely there are more.
Under the new regime the area gained a quaint name: the New Acquisition. Although not all of the territory "newly acquired" by South Carolina through the 1772 survey was part of York County, the importance of the well-settled region between the Broad and Catawba Rivers caused the name New Acquisition to be used for what later became York County. At the Provincial Congresses of 1775 we find representatives from the "District of the New Acquisition", and the name stuck as late as the State Constitutional Convention of 1790. The importance of New Acquisition District is evidenced by the fact that in the Provincial Congresses it was allowed fifteen representatives, while the "District between the Broad and the Catawba" embracing the territory south of New Acquisition, later divided into Chester, Fairfield, and Richland Counties, was allowed only ten.
In 1781, while the Revolution was still going on and Charlestown was in British hands, Governor Rutledge appointed Ordinaries for each of the seven districts. This placed a Court of Ordinary in Camden, and for the few years that office existed, Wills and Administrations from York were handled and recorded there. These records finally found their way into the Kershaw County Probate Judge's office and are extant. These neglected probate records of Camden District, in which numerous York pioneers are mentioned, are currently being published inn The South Carolina Magazine of Ancestral Research.
We now have a long list of counties whose records must be searched in order to trace an early York County family: Anson, Mecklenburg, and Lincoln in North Carolina; Charleston, Kershaw, and York in South Carolina. And even all that searching is not exhaustive. York County was settled from two directions. There were new immigrants from the Port of Charlestown (the McKnights and the Beersheba Loves, for example) and overland pioneers whose backgrounds were in Pennsylvania and Virginia (the Brattons, Guys, Bethesda Loves, Watsons, Henrys, and many others). Therefore the records of many counties in Pennsylvania and Virginia are essential for any thorough search, notably Chester, Lancaster, York, and Cumberland in Pennsylvania, and Orange and Augusta in Virginia.
A final observation and a question. York County was one of those South Carolina counties created by the County Court Act of 1785, and that piece of legislation gave the county its name. The 1785 act was a program to create counties of the kind found in Virginia and North Carolina. The lowcountry region flatly rebuffed the program, but in the upcountry the county court concept took hold and thrived. This was because the people of the upcountry were not only dissatisfied with the inconvenience of having their affairs in mesne conveyance and probate handled in Charleston, but were also experienced with county government in the provinces to the north whence many of them came. David Duncan Wallace has written in his Short History of the "incompetence" of the county courts erected in 1786 and gives this as the explanation of their abolition in 1800, when they gave way to districts, smaller than those districts created in 1768 but set up more or less the same. But when one peruses the earliest Minute Book of the York County Court, which got right down to business in January of 1786, one is not left whit and impression of incompetence at all. The Justices were diligent in being present for court. Several had formerly been members of the Tryon County Court and were experienced in procedure. The clerk, John McCaw, made clear and literate records. In the first year of its existence, the court had established a permanent site for its seat (at Fergus Crossroads, later called Yorkville), begun a courthouse, "gaol", and set of stocks, appointed constables for every section of the county, named road managers and ordered several new roads to be laid out. Whatever may have been going on in forgotten counties such as Lincoln, Bartholomew, Winton, or Lewisburg, the York County Court was obviously doing its job effectively.
This is the question. It is a firm tradition that York County took its name from York County in Pennsylvania because many early settlers came from the northern county. The only contradiction worth mentioning is an early newspaper article which says the name came from an early settler named Jonathan York, but this seems doubtful. The earliest usage of the name York was in the County Court Act of 1785. Is there any real contemporary documentary evidence for the source of this name?