HBF Lecture: Twilight on the South Carolina Rice Fields

Historic Beaufort Foundation is continuing its "Dinner & a Lecture" series on July 26th with a presentation about Heyward Family correspondence relating to demise of rice production during the mid-19th century. That evening, Dr. Allen H. Stokes, Jr. of the South Caroliniana Library and Margaret Belser Hollis, a Heyward family descendant, will lecture on the Twilight on the South Carolina Rice Fields drawing from the family letters written between 1863 and 1871. For more information about this HBF event, call Historic Beaufort Foundation at 379-3331.

If you'd like to know more about rice plantations and production, here are a few suggestions you can explore in other parts of the Beaufort County Library even while the BDC Research Room is closed for relocation:

1) Read these Connections entries about rice and Thomas Heyward in this blog.

2) Some of the sources for information about Thomas Heyward, Jr. posted online in the "Local Notables" section about him in the "Recommended Reading" are available in other parts of the Beaufort County Library.

3) We filmed the Beaufort County Historical Society Papers years ago. You can find #55 Rice, Indigo and the Carolina Lowcountry (1974) on microfilm at both the Beaufort and Hilton Head Island Branch Libraries.

4) Let's say that you want to do find what how large the harvest for rice was on a particular plantation or farm. One can uncover that information through the United States Original Agriculture, Industry, Social Statistics, and Mortality Schedules for South Carolina, 1850-1880 -- and the BCL provides two ways to see the information:

A) Copies of the United States Original Agriculture, Industry, Social Statistics, and Mortality Schedules for South Carolina, 1850-1880 is on microfilm at Beaufort Branch for the time being.
B) Ancestry Library Edition subscription database also includes the United States Original Agriculture, Industry, Social Statistics, and Mortality Schedules for South Carolina, 1850-1880 -- although it is a little tricky to find it. Please ask one of our competent Reference librarians to show you how to use this database -- or any of our other subscription databases. Explaining how resources work is what reference librarians do.

Copies of Twilight on the South Carolina Rice Fields are in our Technical Services department. When Technical Services staff finish doing what has to be done to release the books for the local history sections, I will post an update here in Connections for you.

Click here for the BCL Branch Hours and Locations.