New (and New to Us) Materials: July, August, and September 2019

Since the beginning of Fiscal Year 2020, we have acquired a number of new materials via purchase, donation or discovery.  As always, Beaufort Branch is generous in giving us posters of community events. Sam and Kristi continue to find interesting items in the storage areas such as building plans. And I like to think that I am good at selecting appropriate materials for the special collection, particularly in light of the fact that materials in the BDC are supposed to still be usable in the BDC 100 years from now!

People books feature prominently this quarter. Jonathan Green's Seeking is a documentary by Charles Allan Smith about how an interest in Green's ancestors influence his art. A complement to the award-winning documentary is Seeking: Poetry and Prose Inspired by the Art of Jonathan Green edited by Kwame Dawes and Marjory Wentworth.

Pat Conroy: Our Lifelong Friendship by Bernie Schein was featured as an BDC Author Book Talk on October 1, 2019.


Not all accounts about military service on the local Marines bases are complementary. We collect personal memoirs good or bad about the USMC Air Station, Beaufort, MCRD Parris Island and the US Naval Hospital to provide a broader perspective. This Recruit: A First Hand Account of Marine Corps Boot Camp Written While Knee Deep in the Mayhem of Parris Island by Kieran Michael Lalor and Fight Like A Girl: The Truth Behind how Female Marines are Trained by Kate Germano with Kelly Kennedy have been added to the BDC to broaden the perspective of what is already in our holdings.

Eliza Lucas Pinckney by Margaret F. Pickett and Captain William Hilton and the Founding of Hilton Head Island by Dwayne W. Pickett discuss local very important people of the colonial period.  The last major biography of Pinckney was published in 1896 so Pickett's book is a very welcomed addition to the genre. Her son, Dwayne Pickett tackled the first biography to be written about explorer William Hilton. 

I make occasional purchases of adult fiction and children's materials in order to provide a base for a literary history of Beaufort for the future. The Tubman Command: A Novel by Elizabeth Cobbs has a permanent spot in our small fiction section. I bought copies of The Mermaid of Hilton Head: A Christmas Coral written and illustrated by Nina Leipold as a record of Starbook Publications about Beaufort District and Crosby by Dennis Haseley on account of the Jonathan Green illustrations, even though both books are for children.

Avary Hack Doubleday recounts her childhood on Hilton Head Island before the bridge arrived in 1956 in Daughter of the Dawn. She lived at Honey Horn Plantation with her family from 1950-1956 while her father and his business partners harvested timber. Honey Horn Plantation is now the site of  the Coastal Discovery Museum. 


Daufuskie Daze: Living, Learning, and Teaching on a South Carolina Sea Island by Jim Alberto is featured in two upcoming BDC Author Book Talks, co-sponsored by the Pat Conroy Literary Center. Be sure to register if you'd like to attend.

Backwater Frontier: Beaufort County, South Carolina at the Forefront of American History by Richard E. Thomas also emphasizes people in Beaufort's past. In the author's own words it is "a non-fiction work ... a work of storytelling" in which he creates and attributes thoughts to the personages that cannot be documented in the usual manner. He includes chapters on Pedro Menendez de Aviles; Eliza Lucas Pinckney; Robert Barnwell Rhett; Admiral Samuel DuPont; General David Hunter; Robert Smalls; Harriet Tubman; Ormsby Macknight Mitchel and Charles Fraser of Sea Pines.  

As we all know, fighting the Civil War was an enormously expensive drain on the public coffers. In his book Civil War Taxes: A Documentary History, 1861-1900 retired tax attorney John Martin Davis (and part-time Beaufort resident) provides a comprehensive overview of the tax initiatives each side devised to fund their war efforts. Given that the US government sold most of the properties left behind the Confederates here in Beaufort District, this is a critical resource to understanding the foundation for the process.

Perhaps a bit of an odd choice given what we usually collect, after borrowing How to Weed Your Attic: Getting Rid of Junk without Destroying History by Elizabeth H. Dow and Lucinda P. Cockrell from another SCLENDS Library (something I do on a rather frequent basis when in doubt about a particular title), I bought one for the Research Room because it offers great guidelines to use with customers. It explains what to keep - and why; what to give away - and why; and what to throw away - and why. And the real bonus? It's only 133 pages long.

The BDC grants permission to republish or broadcast some of our images in educational projects or in the interest of the greater good. Because PBS used some of our Civil War images in its Reconstruction: America After the Civil War, we added a DVD of the series to our holdings.

Another Reconstruction-themed book is The Risen Phoenix: Black Politics in the Post-Civil War South by Luis-Alejandro Dinnella-Borrego that highlights the careers of six African American legislators, our own Robert Smalls included. 

Visuals are increasingly popular. In the integration of the Beaufort and Hilton Head Branches vertical files into the BDC vertical files, we discovered a small booklet, Hilton Head Island: The Best, containing black and white photographs by Sam Burnett, Gary Forcier, Eric Horan, Bill Littell, Skip Meachen, Kathleen Webster, The Island Packet and Lexart, Ltd. with original poetry by Jim Orr from 1987. The item was printed compliments of the Hilton Head Bank & Trust Company. It is now cataloged to sit on our shelves rather than be tucked away in a subject file.

We also discovered The Walter Greer Retrospective, March 19 - May 4, 1997 exhibit catalog in one of the former Hilton Head Branch Library vertical files.  Greer was Hilton Head Island's first resident artist and the gallery at the Self Family Arts Center is named in his honor.

Ray Ellis' Savannah and the Lowcountry (1994) reproduces 119 of his paintings of this area. This was a gift to the BDC. (It seems that next year, I'll have plenty of "new to us" materials to highlight during "American Artist Appreciation Month.)

The "Daufuskie Diva", Sallie Ann Robinson, strikes again with another scrumptious and entertaining cookbook, Sallie Ann Robinson's Kitchen: Food and Family Lore from the Lowcountry. (And, I don't even like cooking). She includes dishes that I grew up with: "Black-eyed Peas with Okra" and some I didn't, but should have: "'Fuskie Shrimp and Blue Crab Burger."

Along Southern Roads: Images and Essays Ramblin' around the South with essays by Beaufort residents Ryan Copeland, Collins Doughtie, Lynne Hummell and Sandy Dimke is a treat for the eyes. More than 20 of the full color images were taken somewhere in Beaufort District though there are also photographs from Virginia to Texas.

The Friends of the Beaufort Library let me get first pick of the items donated to them. Last month I selected A Gullah Neap Tide by Robert E. Schiller; Two Faces of Paradise by Charles McLaughlin, A Native Son's Paintings by West Fraser, and the 1978 and 1979 annuals from Beaufort Academy.

If you have something that you would consider donating to the Research Room, please contact me at bdc@bcgov.net or 843-255-6468. The best thing anyone can do for the future of the Beaufort District Collection is to give us "first dibs" on historical records.