South Carolina Culpepper Archives
Orangeburg District / County

History

Modern day Orangeburg County is in the middle South Carolina part of the Coastal Plains region.  The name of Orangeburg was first used in the 1730s for a township on the Edisto River. Swiss and German farmers moved into this region around 1735, and English settlers from the low country followed.  Orangeburg District was established in 1769 in the central part of the state as one of the seven original judicial districts. The battle of Eutaw Springs was fought there during the Revolutionary War on 8 Sep 1781; it was the last major battle of the war in South Carolina. From 1785 to 1791, Orangeburg District included four counties: Lexington, Orange, Winton, and Lewisburg, but its counties never became effective. The district was reduced in size when Barnwell (1800) and Lexington (1804) districts were formed. Large plantations using slave labor were established in Orangeburg in the nineteenth century, and the county became a major producer of cotton. In 1868, Orangeburg District was designated Orangeburg County and subsequently, parts of Orangeburg went to form Aiken (1871) and Calhoun (1908) counties. Its county seat, the town of Orangeburg, is on I-95, about 70 miles northwest of Charleston and 40 miles southwest of Columbia. Orangeburg County is bordered by the counties of Lexington, Calhoun, Clarendon, Berkeley, Dorchester, Bamberg, Barnwell and Aiken.

Newspaper: The Times and Democrat, Orangeburg, SC; The State, Columbia

Any names below in red have not been matched with a person in the Culpepper family tree. If you can identify any of them, please let us know.

Census Records

1790 US Census

1800 - 1930 US Censuses

Marriages

Social Security Death Index (SSDI)

All records of deaths on or before 30 Sep 2004 in which the final residence was in this county.

Burials

Places

If you have a photograph or more information on any of these, or in particular, if you know which Culpepper a place may have been named for, please contact us.