South Carolina

Revolutionary War Muster Roll. Conrod Rife enrolled in the 3rd South Carolina Regiment on August 10, 1777. He appeared in Captain Field Farrer's Company muster roll on August 1, 1779. The regiment consisted of volunteer, mounted riflemen and was mustered into the Continental Army in July 1776. They fought at the Siege of Savannah and the Siege of Charles Town. The regiment was captured in May 1780, at Charles Town when the city surrendered to a British invasion force and was disbanded the following January. Revolutionary War Muster Rolls, 1775-1783, M246, NARA.

Swiss Protestants immigrated to South Carolina.

King Charles II of England granted the Province of Carolina to the Lords Proprietors in 1663 as a business enterprise. The eight English royalists founded Charles Town in 1680 as their new colony’s center of trade and culture and the port of entry. The new colony attracted settlers who farmed on the fertile coastal plain in the vicinity of Charles Town. In 1733, the South Carolina General Assembly established eleven townships along major rivers of the coastal plain to encourage immigration to the interior of the province.1 Among these new townships were Orangeburg and Saxe-Gotha.2

The first Swiss Protestants to arrive in South Carolina settled around Orangeburg in 1735. Two years later, Swiss settlers arrived in Saxe-Gotha. Before the Swiss arrived, the region was a wilderness with only four or five English residents.3 The government of England encouraged the immigration of Protestants to the Carolinas and provided settlers with 50-acres of free land and a subsidy of twenty Pounds Sterling.4 A letter written by John Peter Purry in 1735 and cosigned by a dozen German-speaking residents of the Saxe-Gotha Township, was distributed in Switzerland to encourage migration to the township.5

Partly as a result of the letter and the inducements offered by the British Crown, large numbers of Palatines (German-speaking Swiss Protestants) settled in Orangeburg, Congaree and Wateree Districts between 1740 and 1755.6 Between 1732 and 1744, at least eleven ships arrived in the Carolinas carrying Swiss immigrants. As late as 1765, six hundred refugee Protestants from two districts of south Germany and Switzerland (Palatine and Swabia) were sent from London to the townships in South Carolina set aside for them.7 The ancestor of Thomas Rife likely settled in South Carolina during this period.8

Saxe-Gotha Township was the frontier of European settlement.

Many of the settlers in Saxe-Gotha Township fled during the Cherokee War of 1759-1761. They fled for safety to the towns of Ebenezer and Savannah, in the colony of Georgia, to Charles Town, and to Purrysburg, a settlement on the coast of South Carolina.9 Some of the Swiss settlers never returned to their homes in Saxe-Gotha. Some were killed during the war, and others moved north to Pennsylvania, where conditions were safer with established schools and churches.10

After their defeat, the Cherokee ceded some of their lands east of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the settlers and moved their towns further west.11 This opened a large area of land in the Piedmont Plateau and the adjacent low country that attracted land speculators and settlers from existing settlements to the north of South Carolina. During the French and Indian Wars, settlers from Virginia began moving south, looking for cheap and secure land.12 A fork on the Great Wagon Road crossed the northern part of Saxe-Gotha Township; Scots-Irish families from Virginia and Pennsylvania settled in the district in the generation just before the American Revolution.13

Conrod Rife and Peter Chambliss fought in the Revolutionary War.

As a result of conflicts over taxes and governance, a revolutionary government was established in Charles Town in 1775. Although many Carolinians still supported the British Crown, the Royal Governor left the colony, and South Carolina declared itself an independent state on July 4, 1776. Events in the Northern colonies soon led to the American Revolution.14

In June 1775, Conrod Rife enlisted in Captain Field Farrer’s Company of state troops at Ninety-Six Court House.15 The company became one of ten companies of the 3rd Regiment of the South Carolina Line.16 The 3rd Regiment consisted of volunteer, mounted riflemen who were not militiamen. The Regiment was mustered into the Continental Army (known in those days as the Continental Establishment) in September 1776 17 and fought at the Sieges of Savannah and Charles Town. The entire 3rd Regiment, including Farrer’s company, was captured in May of 1780 at Charles Town when the city surrendered to a British invasion force. After its capture, the Regiment of 259 men disbanded in January 178118 before Rife’s term of enlistment expired.19

After the 3rd Regiment surrendered, the enlisted men were paroled and then exchanged. Many subsequently joined other regiments.20 Conrod Rife appeared on the roll of Captain Philemon Waters’ Company, 1st Spartan Regiment of Militia (Light Dragoons), soon after the 3rd Regiment disbanded.21 Conrad’s Compiled Military Service Record states that he served for 46 months and 21 days between August 10, 1777, and July 1, 1781.22

In 1780, Peter Chambliss lived in Camden District, South Carolina, upstream of Saxe-Gotha Township. He enlisted in the 5th Regiment, South Carolina Line, during the Revolutionary War and served from 1778 until 1781.23

The British army and its Tory militia marched towards Virginia, where they launched an unsuccessful invasion of the middle Atlantic colonies. Eventually, the British army surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia, in October 1781, and the last British troops left Charles Town in December 1782.24

Peter Chambliss married the widow Rife.

The 1790 Federal Census listed Conrod Rife as living alone with one slave on a farm near Sandy Run in the Orangeburg District.25 Sandy Run is a stream about eleven miles south of the Fall Line on the Santee/Congaree River in the old Saxe-Gotha Township. The census does not clearly show the location of Rife’s farm, but its location was determined by comparing names in the 1790 and 1800 Federal Census. In 1800, the twenty families living along Sandy Run were a German-speaking community of 119 adult men, 101 adult women, 260 children, and 107 slaves.26

The Census of 1800 enumerated Mary Rife as living on the farm near Sandy Run in Lexington County, Orangeburg District, that Conrod Rife occupied in 1790. She was listed as a widow with four children and two slaves; two boys and a girl less than ten years of age and one girl described as 10-15 years old. Family genealogies list the two boys as William, born in 1795, and Jacob, born in 1798. No record of Conrod Rife exists after 1790, so it is presumed that he died before 1800.

On March 23, 1801, Polly (Mary) Rife claimed 67 acres of land in the Congaree Swamp above Beaver Creek.27 This may have been a land grant based on her husband’s Revolutionary War service.28

Peter Chambliss also received a land grant as a Revolutionary War veteran.29 The 1800 Federal Census enumerated him in Lexington County on the Edisto River not far from the Rife farm on Sandy Run.30 He was married, had two sons (Peter Corbin, aged ten and John, aged eight), a girl (Elizabeth, aged four), and three slaves. His wife was probably Mary Elizabeth Corbin, who was born in 1771 and died in 1798.31 By the date the census was taken, he may have been courting his third wife, the widow Mary Rife.

  1. A. S. Salley, Jr., The History of Orangeburg, South Carolina, (Baltimore: Regional Publishing Company, 1969), 69-70 ↩︎

  2. Daniel Marchant Culler, Orangeburg District, 1768-1868: History and Records, (Spartanburg, South Carolina: The Reprint Company Publishers, 1995), 7 ↩︎

  3. Salley, The History of Orangeburg, South Carolina, 70 ↩︎

  4. Salley, The History of Orangeburg, South Carolina, 71 ↩︎

  5. Salley, The History of Orangeburg, South Carolina, 29, 42, 71 ↩︎

  6. I. Daniel Rupp, A Collection of upwards of Thirty Thousand Names of German, Swiss, Dutch and French and other Immigrants in Pennsylvania from 1727 to 1776, (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1965), 15; Salley, The History of Orangeburg, South Carolina, 43 ↩︎

  7. Rupp, A Collection of upwards of Thirty Thousand Names, 15 ↩︎

  8. J. H. Easterby, Index to Wills of Charleston County, South Carolina: 1671-1868, (Charleston: Charleston Free Library, 1950), Vol. 26: 527; Johannes Schombert Memorial, Memorials Vol. 7: 190, Roll ST 91, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, SC ↩︎

  9. Salley, The History of Orangeburg, South Carolina, 88, 231-6 ↩︎

  10. Rupp, A Collection of upwards of Thirty Thousand Names, 14 ↩︎

  11. Moreland Jones and Mary Bondurant Warren, abstractors, South Carolina Immigrants, 1760 to 1770, (Danielsville, GA: Heritage Papers, 1988), iii; Philip Mullins, The Ancestors of George and Hazel Mullins, (Austin: Privately Published, 1994), 7 ↩︎

  12. Salley, The History of Orangeburg, South Carolina, 219 ↩︎

  13. Culler, Orangeburg District, 1768-1868: History and Records, 3 ↩︎

  14. Salley, The History of Orangeburg, South Carolina, 255, 262 ↩︎

  15. Bobby Gilmer Moss, Roster of South Carolina Patriots in the American Revolution, (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., 1983), 815; Conrod Rife’s Record, Revolutionary War Rolls 1775-1783, M246, Roll 89, War Department Collection of Revolutionary War Records, 1709-39, RG 93 NARA ↩︎

  16. Murtie June Clark, Compiler, The Pension Lists of 1792-1795 with other Revolutionary War Pension Records, (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co. Inc., 1991), 147; Revolutionary War Rolls, 1775-1783, NARA, M246, Roll 89, War Dept. Collection of Revolutionary War Records, 1709-39, RG 93, NARA, Washington, DC ↩︎

  17. Salley, The History of Orangeburg, South Carolina, 351; Moss, Roster of South Carolina Patriots in the American Revolution, xiii ↩︎

  18. Salley, The History of Orangeburg, South Carolina, 366-7 ↩︎

  19. Moss, Roster of South Carolina Patriots in the American Revolution, 815 ↩︎

  20. Salley, The History of Orangeburg, South Carolina, 367 ↩︎

  21. Moss, Roster of South Carolina Patriots in the American Revolution, 815; Sara Sullivan Ervin, South Carolinians in the Revolution with Service Records and Miscellaneous Data, (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1965), 82; Salley, The History of Orangeburg, South Carolina, 277 ↩︎

  22. Compiled Service Records of Soldiers Who Served in the American Army During the Revolutionary War, M881, Roll 0884, NARA. ↩︎

  23. Moss, Roster of South Carolina Patriots in the American Revolution, 161 ↩︎

  24. Salley, The History of Orangeburg, South Carolina, 526 ↩︎

  25. Conrad Rife, United States First Census (1790) M637, Orangeburg, SC, Series M637, Roll 11 ↩︎

  26. Mary Rife, United States Second Census (1800), M32, Sandy Run, Orangeburg, SC, Series M32, Roll 49. ↩︎

  27. Polly Rife Plat, State Plats (Columbia series), Vol. 38: 295, Roll ST 586, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, Columbia, SC ↩︎

  28. Ronald Vern Jackson, et al, editors, Index to South Carolina Land Grants, 1784-1800, (Bountiful, Utah: Accelerated Indexing Systems, Inc.), 123 ↩︎

  29. Jackson, Index to South Carolina Land Grants, 1784-1800, 25 ↩︎

  30. Peter Chambliss, United States Second Census (1800), Lexington County, Orangeburg District, South Carolina, Series M32, Roll 49; Peter Chambley, United States First Census (1790), M637, Richland County, SC, Series M637, Roll 11 ↩︎

  31. “Mississippi Court Records 1799-1835,”, 155, Peter Corbin Chambliss, www.ancestry.com, accessed December 22, 2013 ↩︎