1. John Kerr, son of Samuel Kerr and Mary Calhoun, appears to have been born by or before 1766 in Granville (later Abbeville) County, South Carolina. As the previous posting (linked in the paragraph above) states, John had a survey for 640 acres in Ninety-Six District on 16 July 1784, and this appears to place his date of birth by or before 1766. This is the first record I can find of John showing that he was of age, so I assume that he had recently come of age at the time he acquired this land.

John Speculates in Land in Ninety-Six (later Pendleton) District

The land surveyed for John Kerr on 16 July 1784 was on Wilson’s Creek in a part of Ninety-Six District soon to become Pendleton District.[2] The surveyor was Patrick Calhoun, uncle of John’s mother Mary Calhoun Kerr. John’s tract was bounded north by William Matlack and southeast by lands surveyed for Alexander Noble, son of John Noble and Mary Calhoun. Mary Calhoun Noble was an aunt of Mary Calhoun Kerr, and Alexander Noble married his first cousin, Mary Calhoun Kerr’s sister Catherine Calhoun.

As has previously been discussed, John Kerr’s sister Jane married John Green about 1788, and records indicate that by 1790 John and Jane Kerr Green had settled in Pendleton District and had begun assisting Jane’s uncle John Ewing Colhoun in developing what would become his Keowee Heights plantation at the junction of the Keowee and Twelve Mile Rivers in Pendleton District. John E. Colhoun had acquired the 640 acres on which his Keowee Heights house was built on 21 May 1784.[3]

Also noted previously: on 16 June 1784, John Kerr’s mother Mary Calhoun Kerr (a sister of John Ewing Colhoun) had a survey for 350 acres in what would soon become Pendleton District.[4] The tract of 350 acres Mary had surveyed was on the middle fork of Twelve Mile River north and east of the 640-tract that her brother John E. Colhoun obtained at the juncture of the Twelve Mile River and Keowee River a few weeks before Mary’s land was surveyed. John Kerr’s 640 acres on Wilson’s Creek were south of the land of his uncle John E. Colhoun, in the southern part of Pendleton District.

In case you’re wondering why multiple family members with roots in Abbeville County chose in 1784 to purchase tracts of land in Ninety-Six (later Pendleton) District, read this valuable commentary by Wade Dorsey of the South Carolina Department of Archives and History as SCDAH added to its website digital images of state plats for land grants, 1784-1868. He explains,

When the British evacuated South Carolina in 1783, they left an independent but prostrate state. Having suffered through eight years of war and having experienced more battles and skirmishes than any other state, South Carolina was destitute. Aside from her exhausted population, her only real asset was vacant lands that had not yet been granted. In 1784 the General Assembly passed “An Act for Establishing the Mode and Conditions of Surveying and Granting the Vacant Lands Within this State.” It is important to understand that lands granted by the State were not, for the most part, for military service but were essentially purchases of vacant lands by the grantee. Along with cash payment, one could pay these costs with a promissory note called an indent that had been issued to pay for military service or providing supplies. At first the price was $10.00 per hundred acres, with the price dropping in 1791 to the cost of the office fees and surveying. Out of the many thousands of grants, there were several hundred bounty grants given at no cost to veterans of South Carolina’s Continental Regiments.

As David Ramsay notes in his classic study of the settlement of the South Carolina backcountry, in 1777, the Cherokees, having taken the British side during the Revolution, ceded to South Carolina all their lands east of the Unacaye mountains, and in 1784, a land office was opened to sell the land. This spurred rapid settlement in the backcountry (David Ramsay, Ramsay’s History of South Carolina rrom Its First Settlement in 1670 to the Year 1808, vol. 2 [Newberry, South Carolina: Duffie, 1858], p. 124).

It’s clear to me that the John Kerr with the 16 July 1784 survey of 640 acres was John, son of Samuel Kerr and Mary Calhoun, because of his connection to William Matlack whose land adjoined John Kerr’s on the north. The day after John Kerr had his survey, Patrick Calhoun surveyed another 640 acres next to John for William Matlack.[5]  William Matlack was a Philadelphia watchmaker and clockmaker who had by this date opened a business in Charleston, and who was speculating in land in the South Carolina upcountry with John Kerr.

In a survey book he kept in the period 1784-1792, which is now found in the “John C. Calhoun Papers” at Clemson University Library’s Special Collections and Archives (mss 200), Patrick Calhoun recorded notes about his two surveys on 16 July 1784 for John Kerr and William Matlack, each for 640 acres. Patrick Calhoun’s notes in the survey book state that John Kerr’s and William Matlack’s tracts adjoined each other, and that John Kerr’s 640 acres adjoined 150 acres on Wilson’s Creek that Patrick Calhoun surveyed on the same day, 16 July, for John Kerr’s cousin Alexander Noble. Alexander Noble was the son of John Noble and Mary Calhoun, Mary Calhoun being a sister of John Kerr’s grandfather Ezekiel Calhoun. Alexander married Catherine Calhoun, an aunt of John Kerr; Catherine was a sister of John Kerr’s mother Mary Calhoun.

On 21 April 1785, both Matlack and John Kerr sold David Ramsay, a Charleston physician, their tracts of 640 acres.[6] (But note that John Kerr’s sale to David Ramsay apparently fell through at some point: see below). Both John Kerr and William Matlack witnessed the deed of each other (along with other witnesses), and the deeds were proven in Charleston District on 21 May 1801. John Ker’s deed to Ramsay (the surname is spelled Ker in the deed and John signs as Ker) identifies him as a hatter, and William Matlack’s deed states that he was a watchmaker. These are businesses both men are known to have had in Charleston, so these deeds indicate that by 1785, John Kerr was living in Charleston and had a business there. John Kerr proved Matlack’s deed to David Ramsay in Charleston on 21 May 1801.

John Sets Up Business in Charleston

By April 1785, when John Kerr sold his 640 acres to David Ramsay with William Matlack witnessing, and probably by July 1784, when John acquired this land, it seems to me he had left Abbeville County and gone to Charleston. I think it’s very likely that what drew Samuel Kerr and Mary Calhoun’s son John to Charleston by this date is that Mary’s brother John Ewing Colhoun had established himself there. After graduating from Princeton in 1774, John E. Colhoun studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1783, when he opened a law practice in Charleston.[7] John E. Colhoun would marry Floride Bonneau in Charleston on 8 October 1786.

Just as it appears that John E. Colhoun took under his wing Samuel and Mary Calhoun Kerr’s daughter Jane and her husband John Green after they married about 1788, employing them to oversee the construction of his Keowee Heights house in Pendleton District and the development of his new plantation there, I suspect John E. Colhoun had also taken Jane’s brother John under his wing by 1784-5, as John Kerr came of age and set himself up in business in Charleston — with his uncle’s help.

William Matlack was born 30 July 1759 in Philadelphia, son of Colonel Timothy Matlack and wife Ellen Yarnall.[8] Timothy Matlack was Secretary of Pennsylvania during the Revolutionary War and a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia in 1780. He was chosen in 1776 to write the original United States Declaration of Independence on vellum.

In 1787, William Matlack married Hannah Carmalt of Philadelphia. Before marrying, he had established a watchmaker’s business on North Third Street in Philadelphia, which he moved to Charleston at some point before 14 May 1787, when an advertisement in Charleston Morning Post states that William Matlack, who had returned to Charleston from Philadelphia where he had gone for the sake of his health, had now set up a clock and watch business at 40 Church Street in Charleston.[9] Matlack died in 1796 in Philadelphia, where he’s buried in the Free Quaker Burial Ground.

David Ramsay, to whom John Kerr and William Matlack sold their tracts on Wilson Creek in Pendleton District, was yet another Charlestonian with Pennsylvania roots.[10] He was born in 1749 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the son of James Ramsay and Jane Montgomery. Lancaster County was, of course, also the place in which John Kerr’s mother Mary Calhoun Kerr was born, her grandparents Patrick Calhoun/Colhoun and Catherine Montgomery having come there from County Donegal, Ireland, in 1733. After Ramsay took a bachelor of physic degree from College of Philadelphia, he moved to Charleston in 1773, where he served in the South Carolina legislature for twenty-three years. Ramsay wrote several noted early histories of the state before he was assassinated in Charleston by William Linnen in 1815.

I think that something must have gone awry with John Kerr’s sale of his 640 acres to David Ramsay, since John sold this tract all over again on 22 January 1800, this time to Samuel Robinson (Robertson in a subsequent deed).[11] The deed states that John Ker (this is the spelling used here) was a hatter of Charleston and Robinson also lived in Charleston. John Ker signed with witnesses William Hall, William Stephens, Rice Fisk, and Gabriel Bailey, with Bailey proving the deed in Charleston on 2 June 1800. Samuel Robertson (the spelling used here) of Charleston then resold the tract to John McFall on 28 March 1805.[12]

A 26 July 1785 deed record adds further evidence that John Kerr was in Charleston by this point. On 26 July 1785, John Kerr witnessed the deed of Mary Ellis of Elizabethtown, New Jersey, to Thomas Limehouse of Charleston of a house and lot on Broad Street in Charleston.[13]  John Kerr proved this deed in Charleston on 5 November 1785.

On 15-16 August 1785, John Ker witnessed the deed of Susanna Parsons, O’Brien Smith, and Thomas Winstanley, all of Charleston, executors of James Parsons, late of Charleston, to Lewis Dutarque of Georgetown, for 2,970 acres in Ninety-Six district, part of a tract of 26,288 acres, 1,000 of which were in the Long Cane area.[14] The Dutarque family connected to the Bonneau family into which John Kerr’s uncle John Ewing Colhoun would marry the following year: Jean-Henri Bonneau, an uncle of John E. Colhoun’s wife Floride Bonneau, married Lewis Dutarque’s aunt Sarah Dutarque. John Kerr’s appearance in this August 1785 deed strengthens the deduction that it was very likely John’s uncle John E. Colhoun who had brought his nephew to Charleston when John Kerr came of age. And the fact that Lewis Dutarque, whose family connected by marriage to the Bonneau family of John E. Colhoun’s soon-to-be wife, was buying land in Ninety-Six District, some of which lay in the Long Cane area, underscores the connections of the Long Cane settlement in Abbeville County to Charleston, a connection evident in John E. Colhoun’s marriage to Floride Bonneau.

On 17 August 1785, Jacob Morris of Charleston, a journeyman hatter, sold to John Ker of Charleston, a hatter, 300 acres on the Saluda River in Ninety-Six District, granted to Morris on 1 August 1785.[15] The deed states that the grant to Morris is recorded in Grant Book EEEE, p. 169. Jacob Morris signed with witnesses Maybury Jolly and William Matlack. The deed was proved in Charleston District 18 August 1785 before Peter Freneau, J.P., by the oath of Maybury Jolly. Jacob Morris was a witness, along with William Matlack, to John Kerr’s sale of his 640 acres on Wilson’s Creek in Ninety-Six District on 21 April 1785.[16]

I have not been able to find a record of the 1 August 1785 grant to Jacob Morris, and am perplexed by the reference to a grant book with the letters EEEE. If this was a grant in Ninety-Six district, then I wonder if this grant book was in the jurisdiction of the district and is no longer extant. Nor can I find any clear information about Jacob Morris. Lewis Morris (1753-1824), son of Lewis Morris and Mary Beekman Morris, made a will in Charleston on 6 April 1810, naming his brother Jacob Morris and a son Jacob Morris.[17] Lewis Morris died in Morristown, New York, 22 November 1824, and a cenotaph in his memory was placed in Saint Michaels church cemetery in Charleston, though he’s buried in the Bronx.[18] Though Lewis Morris did live at some point in Charleston, I have found no evidence that his brother Jacob Morris (1755-1844) lived there, and would tend to think Jacob, who was a Revolutionary general and son of a wealthy signer of the Declaration of Independence, Lewis Morris (1726-1798), would not have been a hatter at any time in his life.

I have also not been able to find what became of this tract of 300 acres after John Kerr purchased it in August 1785. I can find no deed for it in Pendleton District (Anderson County) deed books. I think that the land might have been in either Pickens or Greenville County down the road. The description of the land in the 17 August 1785 deed does not provide precise information about where on the Saluda River this land lay.

John Marries Mary, Daughter of William Stone and Mary Sayer

On or shortly before 25 May 1787, John Kerr married Miss Mary Stone in Charleston, according to an announcement in Charleston’s Morning Post and Daily Advertiser on that date.[19] The wedding announcement states that John Kerr was a Charleston resident. Mary was the daughter of William and Mary Sayer Stone, who married in St. Philip’s parish in Charleston on 29 May 1760.[20] William Stone died by 28 August 1789, when administration of his estate was granted to his widow Mary Stone, with the administration document noting that William Stone was a mariner of Charleston.[21] William Stone’s estate inventory was recorded in Charleston on 6 November 1789, with a notation that his administratrix was Mary Stone, and that he had been a mariner of Charleston.[22] As we’ll see in a moment, when Mary Stone Kerr died in Charleston on or about 14 August 1819, her death record gave her age as 57, so she was born in 1762.

Charleston’s city directory for 1790 shows John Kerr as a hatter with a business at 14 Tradd Street.[23] In his book entitled Our Honoured Relation, James Lee Green suggests that John both operated his business at this Tradd Street address and lived there.[24] If so, by the time his wife Mary died in 1819, he and Mary were living at 37 Elliott Street, as we’ll see in a moment. The 1790 Charleston directory shows John’s uncle John Ewing Colhoun with his law office at 127 King Street. For a photo of the 14 Tradd Street property in 2014, see the head of this posting.

The 1790 federal census enumerates John Kerr in St. Philip’s and St. Michael’s parish in Charleston.[25] The household has one free male aged 16+, one free male under 16, three free females, and four enslaved persons.

John’s Business Ventures in Charleston, 1790s and Early 1800s

In 1794, John Kerr again appears in the Charleston city directory as a hatter, now at 111 Queen Street. John Kerr the hatter continues to be listed in the Charleston city directory through the first decade of the 19^th century, at different addresses over the years.[26] According to Martha Zierden, Kimberly Grimes, David Hudgens, and Cherie Black writing on behalf of the Charleston Museum, John Kerr, whom they describe as a “relatively prosperous merchant,” had other business roles in addition to that of a hatter.[27] These included being a general merchant and grain inspector. This source says that John’s businesses were on East Bay and King Streets. I find John Kerr listed as a Charleston grain inspector in city directories from 1803-8, which show him operating in this capacity at 16 Society Street.[28] On 29 July 1805, the Charleston Daily Courier carried an announcement that the city council had appointed John Ker and others as measurers and inspectors of corn, oats, peas, and other grain.[29]

The 1800 federal census enumerates John Ker in Charleston with a household that included two males under 10, one male 10-15, two males 26-44, one female under 10, one female 10-15, one female 26-44, and one female 45+.[30] I suspect that, by this point, John Ker and his wife Mary may have begun sharing a house with a Scottish born Kerr, Henry Kerr, whom I’ll discuss in a moment, who was in Charleston by 1800 and who entered into business with John Kerr in Charleston in 1805. If that’s the case, then Henry would have been the other male in the household aged 26-44. Who the elderly female and the younger household members were, I have no idea.

For a period starting on 1 January 1805 up to 11 January 1808, John entered into a mercantile partnership in Charleston with Henry Kerr, a Scotsman born in Inverness. Henry had come to Charleston by 1800, when he is listed in that year as a member of the city’s St. Andrew’s Society, a Scottish club, and on 7 February 1805, Charleston’s Daily Courier began carrying an announcement that the firm of Henry and John Ker had been formed on 1 January, and was selling merchandise at 10 Tradd Street in Charleston that had formerly belonged to John Ker.[31] The announcement notes that one of the two merchants (likely Henry, I think) was heading to Britain to select a supply of goods to sell in Charleston in the fall.

This business arrangement ended with Henry Ker’s death in Charleston on 4 January 1808. On 11 January 1808, the Daily Courier carried an announcement that Henry Ker had died at the house of Henry and John Ker of Charleston.[32] Henry is buried in the First Scots Presbyterian church cemetery in Charleston, with his burial record there apparently stating that he was aged 37 at the time of his death and was a native of Inverness, Scotland.[33] Prior to the death of Henry Kerr, announcements in the Daily Courier show Henry and John Ker engaging in the slave trade: an announcement on 30 May 1806 states that Henry and John Ker had sold at Gadsden’s wharf on 26 May a cargo of 311 enslaved people from the Congo, who had arrived aboard the Farnham; and a similar announcement on 18 June states that on 14 June at Gadsden’s wharf, Henry and John Ker had sold a cargo of 217 enslaved persons from Mandingo who had arrived aboard the Hibernia.[34]

John Kerr appears (with his surname spelled as Ker) a number of times in a collection of Charleston District bills of sale in the 1790s and first part of the 1800s buying and selling enslaved persons. On 15 December 1798, John Ker of Charleston bought from Edisto Island planter William Baynard an enslaved woman Amie and her son Tony.[35] On The same day, John Ker sold to Ephraim Mikell Jr. of Edisto an enslaved man named James.[36]

On 7 May 1802, John’s mother-in-law Mary Stone sold Cornelius O’Driscol, a mariner of Charleston, an enslaved man named Adam “commonly called Adam Stone.”[37] This bill of sale, which identifies Mary Stone as a widow of Charleston, was witnessed on 13 November 1802 by John Ker. On 22 October 1803, Mary Stone bought from Charleston merchant William Walton an enslaved woman Bekah aged about 30 and her daughters Sal and Charlotte, aged 8 and 2.[38] On 8 June 1803, John Ker and Mary Stone sold to John Nowell a mulatto enslaved woman named Hetty, aged 21.[39]

On 6 August 1805, John Ker bought from Christian Muldrup Logan an enslaved woman Cloe.[40] The bill of sale states that both John Ker and Christian M. Logan were Charleston merchants. On 7 March 1809, John Ker sold Cloe and her daughter Elizabeth to John Parker of Charleston.[41] On 20 December 1810, John Ker sold another enslaved person, a man named Frank, in Charleston. This sale was to John Crawford of Charleston.[42] 

The 1810 federal census shows John Keer (as his name is spelled here) in Charleston with only two household members, a male and a female, both aged 26-44.[43] I find no indicators that John Kerr and Mary Stone had children, and I suspect that the younger people living in their household on the 1800 federal census were not their children.

Death of Mary Stone Kerr, August 1819

By 14 August 1819, Mary Stone Kerr had died: on that date, The Southern Patriot of Charleston carried a notice that friends and relatives of Mr. John and Mrs. Mary Ker were invited to the funeral of the latter which would be held on that day at their residence, 37 Elliott Street.[44] Charleston death records show Mary aged 57 when she died of consumption about 14 August 1819, and indicate that she was born in Charleston and buried in Archdale cemetery, that is, the cemetery of the Unitarian church. I have not found a tombstone record for Mary.

Elliott Street, where John and Mary Kerr were living by the time she died in 1819, runs parallel to Tradd Street, where John’s first pied à terre in Charleston was located. Elliott is the next street south of Tradd.

From the point of Mary’s death forward, I have not found a clear record of John Kerr. I do not know when and where he died or where he is buried. I have searched indices to wills and estate records for Charleston for the time frame in which it appears John Kerr would have died without finding any information about him in these records.

In my next posting, I’ll provide information about Mary Calhoun and Samuel Kerr’s daughters Catherine (married Hugh Macklin) and Ruth (married William Oliver).

---

[1] Abbeville County, South Carolina, Will Bk. 1, p. 304; Abbeville County, South Carolina, Probate Files, box 52, pack 1231. See also James Wooley, A Collection of Upper South Carolina Genealogical and Family Records, vol. 2 (Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1981), p. 170; and Willie Pauline Young, Abstracts of Old Ninety-Six and Abbeville District Wills and Bonds (Greenville, South Carolina: Greenville Printing Company, 1950), p. 171.

[2] South Carolina State Plats Charleston Series Bk. 9, p. 217; Abbeville County, South Carolina, Plat Bk. A, p. 111.

[3] South Carolina State Plats Charleston Series Bk. 6, p. 29; Abbeville County, South Carolina, Plat Bk. A, p. 8.

[4] South Carolina Plats Charleston Series Bk. 9, p. 222; and Abbeville County, South Carolina, Plat Bk. 1, p. 49.

[5] South Carolina Plats Charleston Series Bk. 5, p. 216. On William Matlack’s tract, see Robert Z. Callaham, Early Landholders South of Anderson, S.C. (Callaham, Walnut Creek, California, 2012), p. 32.

[6] Pendleton District, South Carolina, Deed Bk. F, pp. 318-324, 325-332. See also Deed Bk. G, pp. 133-140.

[7] Biographical Congressional Directory 1774-1911 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913), p. 524; George Norbury Mackenzie and Nelson Osgood Rhoades, ed., Colonial Families of the United States of America, vol. 6 (Baltimore: Seaforth, 1912), p. 126; James Spady, “Colhoun, John Ewing,” South Carolina Encyclopedia; and “John Ewing Colhoun Papers, 1774-1961,” Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, collection 130.

[8] A.M. Stackhouse, “Col. Timothy Matlack, Patriot and Soldier, a Paper Read Before the Gloucester County Historical Society at the Old Tavern House, Haddonfield, N. J., April 14, 1908” (priv. publ., 1910); Chris Coelho, “Timothy Matlack, Scribe of the Declaration of Independence,” Journal of the American Revolution (24 August 2021); and Find a Grave memorial page of William “Billy” Matlack, created by Maxine Kravitz.

[9] See Harrold E. Gillingham, “Old Business Cards of Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 53,3 (1929), p. 221, which reproduces a business card Matlack used in Philadelphia, when he had a watchmaker’s shop on Third Street; and Charleston Morning Post (14 May 1787). My copy of the Charleston Morning Post advertisement is from Breda Stanton Avila’s “Following the Rivers” website, which appears no longer to be online.

[10] W. Curtis Worthington, “Ramsay, David,” South Carolina Encyclopedia; and “Ramsay, David,” in Biographical Directory of the United States Congress at the website of the U.S. Congress.

[11] Pendleton District, South Carolina, Deed Bk. F, pp. 217-8.

[12] Ibid., Bk. H, pp. 465-6.

[13] Charleston County, South Carolina, Deed Bk. N5, pp. 449-450.

[14] Ibid., Bk. S5, pp. 373-7.

[15] Ibid., Bk. P5, pp. 382-4.

[16] Maybury Jolly was a Pennsylvania native who died in Charleston before 7 August 1791, when his death notice appeared in the City Gazette of Charleston: see Mabel L. Webber, “Marriage and Death Notices from the City Gazette,” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 21,2 (April 1920), p. 81.

[17] Charleston County, South Carolina, Will Bk. F, pp. 625-630.

[18] See Find a Grave memorial page of Col. Lewis Morris, Saint Michaels Church cemetery, Charleston, Charleston County, South Carolina, created by Saratoga.

[19] See Mabel L. Webber, “Marriage and Death Notices from the Charleston Morning Post and Daily Advertiser,” The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 21,1 (January 1920), p. 24.

[20] Register of St. Philip’s Parish Charles Town, Or Charleston, S.C., 1754-1810, ed. D.E. Huger Smith and A.S. Salley Jr. (Charleston: South Carolina Society of Colonial Dames of America, p. 158.

[21] Charleston District, South Carolina, Letters of Administration Bk. PP, p. 249. On 6 December 1784, William Stone, mariner of Charleston, sold to George Rout of Charleston an enslaved woman Sylvia and her daughter Rosetta: South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Charleston District, South Carolina Estate Inventories and Selected Bills of Sale, 1732-1872, Bills of Sale 1773-1843, vol. 2Q, p. 419, available digitally at Fold3.

[22] Charleston District, South Carolina, Inventories and Appraisements Bk. B, p. 230, available digitally at Fold3.

[23] Jacob Milligan, The Charleston Directory; and Revenue System of the United States (Charleston: Bowen, 1790).

[24] James Lee Green, Our Honoured Relation (Greenville, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 2009), pp. 105, 261.

[25] 1790 federal census, Charleston County, South Carolina, St. Philip’s and St. Michael’s parish, p. 70 (344).

[26] In 1801, John Kerr the hatter is 49 East Bay: John Dixon Nelson, Nelson’s Charleston Directory, and Strangers Guide, for the year of our Lord, 1801, etc. (Charleston: Nelson, 1801), and ditto for 1802. In 1803, John is at 46 East Bay: Eleazer Elizer, A Directory, for 1803; containing, The names of all the house keepers and traders in the City of Charleston, etc. (Charleston: Young, 1803). In 1809, John Kerr the hatter is at 15 Elliott Street: Richard Hrabowski, Directory for the District of Charleston, comprising the places of residence and occupation of the white inhabitants of the following parishes, etc. (Charleston: Hoff, 1809).

[27] Martha Zierden, Kimberly Grimes, David Hudgens, and Cherie Black, “Charleston’s First Suburb: Excavations at 66 Society Street,” Charleston Museum Archaeological Contributions 20 (Historic Charleston Foundation, December 1988), online at website of Charleston Museum.

[28] See James W. Hagy, City Directories for Charleston, South Carolina For the years 1803, 1806, 1807, and 1813 (Baltimore: Clearfield, 1995), pp. 39 and 73, citing, for 1806, J.J. Negrin, Negrin’s Directory, and Almanac, for the year 1806, etc. (Charleston: Negrin, 1806); ditto for 1807.

[29] “Appointments by City Council,” Charleston Daily Courier (29 July 1805), p. 3, col. 1.

[30] 1800 federal census, Charleston, Charleston County, South Carolina, p. 78.

[31] St. Andrew’s Society of the City of Charleston, Rules of the St. Andrew’s Society, of the City of Charleston, South Carolina (Charleston: Walker, Evans & Cogswell, 1892), p. 40; and Charleston Daily Courier (7 February 1805), p. 3, col. 3.

[32] Charleston Daily Courier (11 January 1808), p. 3, col. 1.

[33] See Find a Grave memorial page of Henry Kerr, First Scots Presbyterian Church cemetery, Charleston, Charleston County, South Carolina, created by Saratoga.

[34] “Prime Congo Slaves,” Charleston Daily Courier (30 May 1806), p. 2, col. 1; “Prime Mandingo Negroes,” Charleston Daily Courier (8 June 1806), p. 3, col. 3.

[35] Charleston District, South Carolina Estate Inventories and Selected Bills of Sale, 1732-1872, Bills of Sale 1773-1843, vol. 3N, p. 22, available digitally at Fold3.

[36] Ibid., p. 23, available digitally at Fold3.

[37] Ibid., p. 477, available digitally at Fold3.

[38] Ibid., vol. 4D, p. 156, available digitally at Fold3. On 7 November 1815, Mary Stone sold Charlotte to John Myers: ibid., vol. 4K, p. 186.

[39] Ibid., vol. 3T, p. 138, available digitally at Fold3.

[40] Ibid., vol. 3X, p. 80, available digitally at Fold3.

[41] Ibid., vol. 4A, pp. 193A and B, available digitally at Fold3.

[42] Ibid., vol. 4D, p. 85, available digitally at Fold3.

[43] 1810 federal census, Charleston, Charleston County, South Carolina, p. 30 (303).

[44] See Elizabeth H. Jervey, “Marriage and Death Notices from the City Gazette of Charleston, S.C. (Continued),” South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine 46,2 (April 1945), p. 71.