Richland Record Survival & Loss Narrative
What burned-courthouse folklore gets wrong—and where records actually survive for Richland County.
Record survival (1865): Columbia’s wartime fires destroyed buildings and many private papers. That is not a license to invent total courthouse annihilation for every series. Rebuild with newspapers, federal military/Bureau files, surviving county series, and neighbors (Lexington, Fairfield, Kershaw, Sumter).
- Separate private loss from public series survival—check SCDAH inventories.
- What survives: substantial post-war restart; capital newspapers; federal files; many microfilmed series.
- Substitutes: neighbor counties; church; city directories after recovery.