New (and new to us) Materials, January - March 2019

The Beaufort District Collection continues to grow from purchases and from donations. Among the materials added to our Research Room shelves during the first quarter of 2019 are:

Application to Beaufort County Council to Rezone Indian Hill prepared for Consolidated Resort Services, 1996 was a donation. It will join hundreds of other planning and development related documents in our holdings.

Cemetery Inscriptions of Lower Colleton County compiled by  the St. Bartholomew's Chapter of the South Carolina Genealogical Society (2000) transcribes tombstones found in more than 50 cemeteries in the area.

The Chinese Christmas Box by Gerald Chan Sieg; calligraphy by Han Sun Woo was a product of poet Edith Dowling's private press, "The Peacock Press, LTD." The booklet was printed by the Beaufort Gazette, 1970.

A Deed so Accursed (2013) by Terence Finnegan reveals the economic and social consequences that spawned lynching and explores the interplay between extralegal violence and political and civil rights. Although lynching supported the ends of white supremacy, many mobs lynched more for private retaliation than for communal motives.

Early Human Life on the Southeastern Coastal Plain edited by Albert C. Goodyear and Christopher Moore (2018) synthesize 50+ years of archaeological research including that done on the Topper site in Allendale County.

Grace Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church - 145th Year Commemorative Journal [2014?] offers vignettes about the organization and its members from its founding in the late 1860s until the publication year.

The Lost Prince: A Search for Pat Conroy by Michael Mewshew (2019) reveals an intimate portrait of a friendship forged and damaged during Conroy's Rome period as he went from a regional writer to an internationally recognized author.

The Lowcountry Phone Directory, 2018 and The Lowcountry Phone Directory, 2019 will come in handy for researchers 5 to 10 years in the future. We often have folks come in to look up the addresses where they or their parents lived while stationed in Beaufort. By the way, our earliest telephone directory is 1954.


Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina, Third Battalion Platoons 320, 321, and 323, 1956 yearbooks came to us via the Friends of the Beaufort County Library. These constitute the only platoon books that we have here in the Beaufort District Collection.

The Overseer: Plantation Management in the Old South by William K. Scarborough (1966; reprint 1984) was the key middle manager on the rice, cotton, and sugar plantations yet little is known about his work or skill set. From the introduction: "It was this agent who, in great measure, determined the success or failure of planting operations on the larger estates devoted to the production of staple agricultural products. To the overseer were entrusted the welfare and supervision of the Negroes; the care of the land, stock, and farm implements; the planting, cultivation, and harvesting of both staple and subsistence crops; and many other responsibilities associated with the management of a commercial agricultural enterprise."

Slave Law and the Politics of Resistance in the Early Atlantic World by Edward Rugemer (2018) compares the development of slavery in Jamaica, Barbados and South Carolina and how some individuals resisted the systems used to keep them enslaved.

We also have added a lot of posters to our catalog as Sam continues to inventory and arrange that part of our holdings. Among the new additions are: "Park, Shop Dine Repeat"; "A Nativity Celebration, 2014"; "The 3rd Annual Lowcountry Vegfest"; "Job Fair"; Penn Center Heritage Day Symposium "Preserving the Cultural Links of Languages", (Penn Center 2005); "Chilly Bean 5K & 10K" race (2016); and "Designing Lady's Island (2018). To our maps, we added a "Parking Map" (2018).

We've received a new archival collection as well: The Beaufort Art Association donated four boxes of their records to the BDC. Initial assessment is on-going.