New (and New to Us) Materials in October & November 2019

Collection development activities have always included a mix of purchases, gifts, and rediscovered items - at least during my twenty-years on the job. Items added to the Research Room during October 2019 continue that long tradition.

A memoir is the least objective, most personal form of writing. There have been a string of memorials and memoirs about Pat Conroy since his 70th birthday and quick death from pancreatic cancer in March 2016. Earlier this year we added memoirs about him by Bernie Schein, Pat Conroy: Our Lifelong Friendship and Michael Mewshaw, The Lost Prince: A Search for Pat Conroy. The latest memoir is perhaps the most personal of all. Tell Me A Story: My Life with Pat Conroy by Cassandra King Conroy, 2019 recounts "King-Ray's" life and times as the girlfriend, wife and widow of the Lowcountry's "Prince of Tides."  
 

Palmetto Bluff: A Matter of Taste by the Women of Palmetto Bluff, 2012 is a cookbook published as a way to raise funds in support of Bluffton Self Help, a local non-profit founded in 1987. This book joins a host of other local cookbooks in the 641 section of our stacks. A photography by Marge Agin graces the cover.

Camp Kettle, September 21, 1861 -May 15, 1862: Newspaper of the Roundhead Regiment, 100th Pennsylvania Volunteers with selected biographies of members of the Roundheads and the 8th Michigan, edited by Gary T. Hawbaker, 2019. This little newspaper piloted by members of the Roundhead band had 12 issues, 3/4 of which were published in Beaufort District. Topics covered include casualties by way of military engagement, accident, or disease; camp activities; community events such as concerts; local floral and fauna and military related affairs. A related non-fiction title is A Scratch with the Rebels: A Pennsylvania Roundhead and a South Carolina Cavalier by Carolyn Poling Schriber, 2007.

Relics & Reminiscing: Diary of a Lowcountry Digger by Richard Walker, 2007 is a memoir of his time in pursuit of relics. His particular interest is Civil War related relics located in the Charleston to Beaufort areas. Chapter XV covers a relic hunting trip in Beaufort during the Fall of 2004 that includes many fine photographs of his discoveries.

Nairne's Muskhogean Journals: The 1708 Expedition to the Mississippi River by Capt. Thomas Nairne, edited by Alexander Moore, 1988 is an oldie but goodie. Moore was in England researching a different topic when he happened to rediscover four letters that Nairne wrote to his friends and fellow Indian traders, Thomas Smith, Ralph Izard, and Robert Fenwick are replete with insightful observations into the lifeways of the Southeastern Indians.  However, Nairne miscalculated the tolerance of the Native Americans for European meddling in their intertribal affairs. As the foreword by Patricia Galloway notes: "Perhaps there was justice rather than irony in the fact that Nairne was the first victim" (p. viii) of the Yamasee War at Pocotaligo on Good Friday, 1715.

The Travelers' Charleston: Accounts of Charleston and Lowcountry, South Carolina, 1666-1861 edited by Jennie Holton Fant, 2016 is a gem of a book of firsthand narratives of visitors from outside the South whose accounts of what they saw and encountered are little known.

The editor has provided copious annotations to supplement the texts. Some chapters are made of correspondence, some are from diary and journal entries, some are articles. "The Woods of South Carolina" written by John Davis in 1798-1799 is a particular treat because of its description of the Beaufort District village of Coosawhatchie and Thomas Drayton's Ocean Plantation near Dawson's Landing today. Another traveler, Margaret Hunter Hall, was in South Carolina from February to March 1828 and wrote a letter to her sister Jane "The Dowdies and Their Clumsy Partners" that recounted her impressions of Llandovery Plantation on the Combahee River,  Nathaniel Hayward's [sic] Bluff Plantation, Coosawhatchie, and Old House Plantation owned by Nathaniel's nephew William Heyward. The earliest account is of Joseph Woory in 1666 who writes that "The Indians call the whole country St. Helena. We suppose the Spaniards usually come amongst them, because where they live is a large wooden cross erected, which they say the Spaniards put there." (p. 5) Woory was part of the Sandford expedition that left Henry Woodward  to remain behind to learn the Indian language and culture.

Former Director of the Bluffton Historic Preservation Society Jeff Fulgham tries to fill in some of the many blanks regarding Woodward in Rediscovering Dr. Henry Woodward's Carolina Frontier, 1665-1686. His research puts Woodward at the epicenter of the English interactions with the Native Americans of this area. Woodward advanced England's imperial goal of thwarting the imperial designs of Spain on the Southeast. 

Bonaventure Cemetery Index Sections A-H Bonaventure Historical Society, 2000: "This publication is an attempt to give every person buried in Sections A-H proper recognition. It updated information previously published by the Works Progress Administration in 1939. The volume is divided into three sections:

• Section I - The Georgia Historical Society has a ledger of Evergreen Cemetery of Bonaventure, 1853-1903 that contains about 1500 burial records.

• Section II - This index is a combination of information from the First Ledger and an inventory done by the Bonaventure Historical Society in 1994 - 1996.

• Section III - Burials not located contains a list of those found in the First Ledger, 1853 -1903 for whom no burial location has been found. Arrangement is by surname in alphabetical order.

Ancestors and Descendants of Samuel French the Joiner of Stratford, Connecticut by Mansfield Joseph French, 1940, 2nd ed. 21 of 150 copies contains a section about "Reverend Mansfield French Biography and Genealogy" on pp. 70-115 including a narrative and source material about Rev. French's activities during the Port Royal Experiment.

The Research Room has a pretty good run of printed telephone directories in the Research Room, 1954 to 2019, after a gift of the Beaufort Phone Directory. (I wonder how much longer it will be even possible to secure a printed telephone directory). 

Occasionally we purchase what some might consider as odd items, for example, coloring books. I decided to purchase a copy of Melissa Conroy's Lowcountry Coloring Book: Charleston, Savannah, the Sea Islands, and Beyond, 2019 for several reasons. She is a native of Beaufort County. She is an artist. She is strongly connected to the Pat Conroy Literary Center that honors her father's contributions to his chosen home town. Besides I can imagine the delight of someone in 2119 when they discover this little gem in the Beaufort District Collection. One of the unique features of this book is that one can create four square framed pictures from the pages. Of course, the BDC copy will never be colored in - or on - but I do think that future researchers may appreciate her drawings.

As readers know, we are clearing out our storage room and in that process discovering some building plans, maps and other materials. Renovations downstairs in the Beaufort Branch resulted in the transfer of most all of their government issued documents and reports upstairs to the BDC. Staff have been carefully going through the documents to see what is online in a stable repository, available in physical format elsewhere, what we could discard, and what we should keep in toto or by sampling, to guide future researchers. 

The Beaufort County Library is not a federal, state, county, or municipal record depository so we are not responsible for sharing government documents forever. We simply do not have the physical space nor the financial resources to permanently house all documents issued by governmental entities. Thus the BDC is highly selective in what we keep. We are currently transferring items the we do not have room to keep to the County's Records Management department for ultimate disposition. We have cataloged the items we are keeping so that they will appear in the SCLENDS catalog. Among the items that we are keeping are these sexy [NOT] titles issued by the City of Beaufort: Report of Certified Public Accountants Financial Statements, 1977, 1981, and 1987;  Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, FY -2007, Basic Financial Statements, 2003,  and Financial Statements for the year ended 1989, 1991, 1996, 2000, and 2002.  

Looking ahead: All units of the Beaufort County Library will be closed at 5 pm on Wednesday, November 27th and all day on November 28th and 29th. Regular hours resume on Saturday, November 30th. The BDC Research Room will re-open for business on Monday, December 2, 2019. 

However, we have a staff shortage on Tuesday December 3rd when the Research Room will be closed for lunch. Other known lunch time closures will occur on December 26 and 27th - in case you'd like to go ahead and mark your calendars.