Arnsberger Postcards Online!

Latest update:  All links are correct as of 13 April 2023. - gmc 

National Postcard Week is an annual event to promote the use of postcards, held in the first full week of May since 1984. And this year we're celebrating all week by featuring a postcard a day on Facebook May 7 - May 13, 2017 from the Beaufort County Library’s latest online collection of special materials from the Beaufort District Collection. [Hint: Type "postcard" into the Search feature on the BDC's Facebook page to get a whole lot more than 7 postcard images.]

• Factoid: The study and collecting of postcards is termed deltiology.

We have hundreds of postcards in the Beaufort District Collection in scrapbooks, in archival boxes, in binders, etc. 

• We have a postcard collection that staff assembled through the years on the topic of Beaufort’s history. 
• Lucille Hasell Culp took photographs in Beaufort, turned them into postcards that she sold, and collected postcards of other places where she had lived or visited.  You can see 41 of those cards in the "Lucille Hasell Culp Collection: A Celebration of Beaufort, SC" at http://bit.ly/2qwAOXa. 
• We have postcards collected by Rev. Dr. Robert E.H. Peeples donated by the Heritage Library to our Research Room that concentrate on the World War II era. 
• And just in time for National Postcard Week, we’ve posted the Russell J. Arnsberger Postcard Collection online in the Lowcountry Digital Library.

  

The Russell J. Arnsberger Postcard Collection is comprised of over 350 postcards in two albums of houses, businesses, public buildings, street views, military base activities and structures in and around Beaufort, South Carolina. Some built structures pictured are no longer extant or have been greatly altered. Among the publishers represented in this collection of 20th century postcards are Albertype Company, Dexter Press, Charles G. Luther’s Pharmacy, the Crescent Drug Company, W.R. Bristol, Palmetto Studios and Photo Arts of Winnsboro, SC. Arnsberger volunteered his time and deltiological expertise to the Beaufort District Collection while he was a resident and as a parting gift, donated his personal collection of Beaufort area postcards to the Library in 2008.  

Based at the College of Charleston, the Lowcountry Digital Library (LCDL) produces digital collections and projects that support research about the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and historically interconnected sites in the Atlantic World. Together with its institutional partners, LCDL helps students, scholars, and a wide range of public audiences develop a better understanding of the history and culture of the South Carolina Lowcountry relative to the nation and the world. Beaufort County Library's Beaufort District Collection staff has been working with LCDL staff for more than a decade bringing some of the Library's holdings to the internet. And the LCDL is a hub for aggregating materials for inclusion in the Digital Public Library of America which means that select items from your local library can be used by students, researchers, family historians, anyone through the DPLA portal. 

Visit all BeaufortCounty Library’s Online Collections in the Lowcountry Digital Library.

 
Please contact us for information about other postcards and local history materials we have and to make an appointment to visit the Research Room: bdc@bcgov.net or call 843-255-6468 for assistance.