1967 · Community & course
1967: The Land Changes Hands
An option, a contract between two timber companies and a deed: the paperwork of September and October 1967 that brought the land to Dr. Ward.
Timeline
Sept. 15, 1967
Option from Waccamaw Lumber Corp. to B. B. Ward recorded (Book 201, Page 189).[Option]
Oct. 9, 1967
Deed of trust by Bennie Brooks Ward to a trustee recorded (Book 203, Page 552).[Deed of trust]
Oct. 10, 1967
The date written in the deed that conveys the land.
Oct. 13, 1967
Contract between Waccamaw Lumber Corp. and Cape Fear Wood Corp. recorded (Book 201, Page 251).[Contract]
Oct. 13, 1967
Deed from Cape Fear Wood Corporation and Waccamaw Lumber Corporation to B. B. Ward and wife Jamie B. Ward recorded (Book 208, Page 520).[Deed]
Document links open for registered members who are signed in. The plat images on this page are public records shown for everyone.
The first recorded step toward Brierwood Estates is not a golf course or a lot. It is a handful of land documents from the fall of 1967, all at the Brunswick County Register of Deeds. On September 15, 1967 an option was recorded from Waccamaw Lumber Corporation to B. B. Ward (Book 201, Page 189). An option gives its holder the right to buy at agreed terms, and it is the earliest record in the Documents Index.
The paperwork then moves quickly. On October 9 a deed of trust by Bennie Brooks Ward was recorded (Book 203, Page 552), which suggests borrowed money was part of the purchase. On October 13 two instruments went on record the same day: a contract between Waccamaw Lumber Corporation and Cape Fear Wood Corporation, the two timber companies that held the land (Book 201, Page 251), and the deed itself, made October 10, 1967, from both companies to B. B. Ward and his wife Jamie B. Ward (Book 208, Page 520).
The community's history gives October 10, 1967 as the day the property was purchased, and that is the date written in the deed. The county's recording date is October 13. Both dates are right; they answer different questions. See the article October 10, 1967: A Doctor Buys a Forest for the human side of the purchase.
Only the first page of the deed has been read for this series; the other 1967 entries are index records and scans, and they do not state the acreage. The 1969 deed that follows in the next chapter describes about 572 acres.
Almost sixty years later the same ground is a community of more than 370 homes, shown below from current county parcel lines over aerial imagery. The golf course that Dr. Ward and his friend Dr. John Madison laid out through the pines is now mostly quiet fairway, ponds and woods between the streets. A second view, drawn like a plat sheet, shows only the lot lines.
