If you happen to be on Facebook and if you happen to follow the BDC's Facebook page,
then you know that I try to feature women's history on a regular basis, and in March particularly so. But there was also a local history program to promote, Irish heritage to acknowledge, a red letter date that was worth noting and the usual weekly "Materials Monday" and "Black History Notes" to post.
Here's a recap of the posts that I made on Facebook during March 2021:
"Materials Monday: Letters" Posts
1 March 2021 - Now that it's Women's History Month, I will focus on letters written by women.
I shall begin with Eliza Ann Summers' weekly letters as compiled in "'Dear Sister": Letters Written on Hilton Head Island, 1867 edited by Josephine W. Martin (Beaufort, SC: Beaufort Book, 1977). In them, Eliza tells her sister Sarah about what it was like to be a teacher to the freedmen and circumstances of daily life at Lawton Plantation and in Mitchelville during the 6 months she spent on "the Head."
For example: From Letter #18, Eliza writes about the deaths of two young Black boys, her class schedules and number of students, the prevalence of rattlesnakes, a man and woman who were struck by lightning but survived, her pony Billy, her pet mockingbirds, her Black servant's upcoming wedding and food scarcity. In fact, when a young Black girl goes missing, the lack of community concern is concerning to Eliza.
"...She [the girl] probably wandered off ... in search of food or else she is lying around the field dead some where. I think the latter. It is a very common occurrence here...Often the children come to school crying, and on asking them what was the trouble they would say I am hungry, I have had no breakfast."
The Library has plenty of copies of this local history title for you to borrow https://sclends.lib.sc.us/eg/opac/record/2102151?locg=1 - or you can make arrangements to visit our Research Room to see this and the many other women of Reconstruction related materials we share on-site.
8 March 2021 - In April 1827, Margaret Hunter Hall, her husband Basil and young daughter, Eliza, set sail from Liverpool, England for America. She wrote intimate detailed letters her sister Jane about her experiences and travels in the United States. Mrs. Hall had high standards of lifestyle, convenience, and behavior based upon her own upbringing in a noble household in Edinburgh and Madrid, Spain where her father, Sir John Hunter, served as British consul for a short time.
In March 1828 the group journeyed from Charleston to Savannah, stopping off at the plantations owned by Nathaniel Heyward and William Heyward (though she spelled their surname "Hayward.") The letters are full of Mrs. Hall's unstinting observations of slavery and of plantation owners. Her critiques of America were not always kind. For example, she did not think much of the conversational skills of the Nathaniel Heyward family in spite of the fact that "His plantation is considered one of the best regulated in this State:"
" ... At dinner we were joined by one of his sons who had been out hunting. We were not much the better of his conversation, nor that of his brother who came in in the evening, neither of them spoke a word. I have heard of sisters being no greater use at a party than to fill two chairs, but I never saw the case so completely identified as in the case of those two brothers. The old gentleman himself is much more willing to talk, but neither is he a man of much information, and when we had got all out of him that we could relative to the cultivation of rice and the treatment of slaves, the conversation flagged so much that we were glad to make our escape to our own room."
You can read more in The Aristocratic Journey; being the outspoken letters of Mrs. Basil Hall written during a fourteen months' sojourn in America, 1827-1828, call # SC 973.55 HAL in the Research Room.
15 March 2021 - Today's featured letters were written by a love-struck young woman living in Seabrook during the 1910s.
In 1914 Albert Onthank, the writer's father and a Beaufort native son, returned with his family to open an egg farm, Sea Island Poultry Farm. The company's main customer was the Marine Corps which had a lot of young and hungry recruits to feed three-squares on Parris Island. Mae had to leave her sweetheart behind in Lynchburg, VA.
The
collection is primarily correspondence. Mary Elizabeth Onthank (called
"Mae) wrote many letters to her beloved Billy (William MacLeod of
Lynchburg, VA) from her home in Seabrook. The letters were mostly
composed between 1914 and the couple's marriage at St. Helena's
Episcopal Church on a Wednesday evening in late June 1915.
Most
of the arrangements for the nuptials were done by mail. One topic was
who Billy would have as groomsmen. Mae had a few ideas about who he
should choose:
"I wish Al [Onthank] would be a grooms man. I hope you haven't asked Cap yet - and please if you will - write and beg Al to be a grooms man to walk with Ovid [Webb of Lynchburg, VA]. I think if you urged him he would - and Jimmy will go with Nance [Nancy MacLeod, sister of the groom]. Now Billy tend to this and don't forget. If Cap wants to come - why we'd be delighted to have him but he doesn't have to be in the party....I would not have Gip. He has acted outrageous about your letter. Please do as I say."
If only husbands - or potential husbands - would listen...
Provenance:
Douglas MacLeod, Mae's grandson, donated the love letters,
transcriptions and family history to the Library back in February 2000.
We keep the transcriptions in the library stacks and the original
letters, envelopes, and photographs in the archives stacks in the
Research Room. Make an advance appointment and we'll be happy to let you
read each and every one.
22 March 2021 - Carolina Letters by Henrietta Duff Montgomery covers correspondence that she sent to family members form December 1939 to late September 1957 from her new home on Lady's Island. Mrs. Montgomery wrote charmingly descriptive letters about the sounds, smells, flora, fauna, and activities along the Beaufort River that their Meridian Road house fronted. She also commented on daily life, the fire station, the post office, oystermen, getting a South Carolina license to drive, social events and local customs.
Her husband, Dr. Andrew J. Montgomery had been a Presbyterian Minister serving at many churches and had recently retired from the Presbyterian Church Board of National Missions based in New York City. In the first letter of the spiral bound booklet dated December 1, 1939 she wrote:
"You might think the quiet would oppress us. Well hardly. We hear children laughing and calling, guns firing tons of ammunition, drums beating, two donkeys braying, very near by. The crane seems to have a regular schedule for his greetings. Yesterday afternoon I stood on the river bank and watched him feed. We also watched an ibis for a long time. But I was speaking of noises! A little terrier came and barked on the beach this morning. He evidently came from the boat - the oyster boat that is beached for repairs on the public beach. There are fiddler crabs here, but they are silent. Of the birds songs, there is not much to mention now, a little too early. The crows are persistent in their caw-cawing, and the roosters crow, the boats chug by....
The Montgomerys were married for almost 72 years. Henrietta died at age 92 in March 1961. Her obituary descried her as "active in church work and a patron of the local library and the Benevolent Society. She was a member of the Sea Island Garden Club." Rev. Dr. Montgomery broke his hip a few months after his wife's death and died on August 2, 1961 at age 96. They are buried in Evergreen Cemetery.
29 March 2021 - The first book by Beaufort District authors, Living Christianity Delineated... (https://archive.org/details/livingchristian00hantgoog ) was published in London in 1760. Included are 6 letters written by Mrs. Mary Hutson, described as "a sincere Christian, an affectionate wife, a tender mother, and condescending mistress in a very uncommon degree." (p. 125) In 1743 the Reverend William Hutson became the first minister of Stoney Creek Presbyterian Church and married widow Mary Woodward Chardon, a grand-daughter of Dr. Henry Woodward, the first English settler in South Carolina.
Mrs. Hutson, like her husband and Hugh Bryan, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Reverend George Whitefield's theology. One can see how important Mrs. Hutson held her faith in Letter V, a letter of condolence and spiritual encouragement to an unnamed recently widowed man, to wit.
"Dear Sir,I Heartily sympathise with you in your late great affliction. Has the Lord once more touched you in your tender part? Has he taken away from you the faithful companion and support of your old age, and are you now left alone? Well, dear sir, is there not a voice in God's providence, as well as in his word; and is not this the language of you affliction? 'O trust not in riches, trust not i friends, trust not in any thing beneath the eternal God, for if you do, they will prove a broken reed, and fail you when you stand most in need.' O then, dear sir, let me intreat you to fly to the fountain ; look to Jesus ; spend the remainder of your days in striving to secure an interest in Christ; make him your friend, and he will be better to you, I am sure, than all the friends you ever had... Surely in this dying country, and these dying times, we ought often to be considering our latter end, and that we may learn now frail we are. And what reason we have to live in an habitual preparation for eternity, lest we should be surprized with the summons of death."
Living Christianity Delineated is also her story of religious conversion. You can read more about the book and the intertwining family connections between the Bryans and Hutsons in Connections.
"Black History Notes Wednesday" Posts
3 March 2021- LeRhonda Manigault had an unusual paranormal experience at the Charleston City Market while on a school trip when she was a teenager. She felt the dead trying to communicate their pain and anguish with her. Ultimately that experience led to an ethnographic study exploring the relationship of seven lowcountry Gullah/Geechee women with religion, music, and daily expressions of their culture.
In Gullah culture, talking to the dead indicates an ongoing exchange between a living person and family members and friends who are deceased. According to the book blurb: "By looking in depth at this long-standing spiritual practice, Manigault-Bryant highlights the subversive ingenuity that lowcountry inhabitants use to thrive spiritually and to maintain a sense of continuity with the past."
I find the topic fascinating. Perhaps you will too. There are plenty of copies of the published book ( https://sclends.lib.sc.us/eg/opac/record/2638289?copy_depth=1;locg=104 ) available in the Local History sections at the Branch Libraries for you to check out.
10 March 2021 - Isabella Coleman Glen wrote a combination family history, memoir, short vignettes regarding community members and some cultural history in her Life on St. Helena Island published in 1980. Born in 1905 to Simon and Isabella (nee Brown) Coleman, she attended Penn School and later worked as a domestic at Frogmore House for the Macdonald family. Isabella eventually saved up $30 to fund her first trip to seek better paying work in New York in 1930. She was part of the Great Migration of African-Americans northwards in the early decades of the 20th century, some of whom were helped by the St. Helena League founded by her elder brother, John, and others from the island who had relocated into the Northeast to better their own economic circumstances. The group helped their family members and friends relocate later.
For a number of years she was living in either Brooklyn, NY or Philadelphia for the summer and teaching school on St. Helena Island during the Fall through Spring months. When her mother died in 1938 and left her a small inheritance, Isabella built the Folly Road Grocery described by Dr. Rowland as "one of the foremost black-owned businesses on the island." She was the first woman in the state to be appointed to the Federal Housing Administration in the 1960s. She had one son with her second husband. At the time of her death on October 4, 1992, Isabella was 86 years old and a resident of Savannah.
We are fortunate to have copies of her book ( https://sclends.lib.sc.us/eg/opac/record/12909?copy_depth=1;locg=104) in the BDC for permanent retention and to have several copies you can borrow and take home to read from the local history sections at most of the Branch Libraries.
17 March 2021 - Eva Smalls Segar has plenty of Songs to Sing, Stories to Tell about growing up Gullah on a small farm in Northern Beaufort County during the 20th century. She graduated Robert Smalls High School and spent 40+ years working as a nurse, more than 30 of those years were at Beaufort Memorial Hospital. [Volume 1] begins with these words in the Author's Foreword: "It's a book about being human, and every word of it is true. I decided to tell my story because I want people to understand that having a powerful determination to survive and never being afraid to love is what is most important in the human experience." Volume 2 begins with her life as a young woman. Both volumes include family photographs.
She would shift her focus to food, sharing recipes in My Gullah Kitchen (2006) and My Thrifty Gullah Kitchen (2008).
The Library has plenty of copies of each title to share with you.
24 March 2021 - Today we highlight another local female African-American author.
Nellie
Holmes Homemaker shares her Journey with a Woman of the Gullah
Culture in a self-published memoir of growing up as a member of the
large extended Holmes family on St. Helena Island. Though she relocated
to New York in the early 1960s to become a professional singer and
garment industry buyer, her heart never left the pluff mud and local
waterways. This book is her love song to the Gullah people and her
native soil.
Like
some of our resources, this is a very local book with a very limited
number of copies printed. The BDC has a permanent copy; the Gullah
Geechee collection at St. Helena Branch library has a copy; and the
Lobeco Branch library has a copy in its Local History section that you
can check out.
31 March 2021 - Matriarchs are very important people in Gullah culture. Beaufort's
own native daughter, Dorothy Holmes-Olenja offers a loving tribute to
the significance of Great Grandma Gladys (AKA Missionary Holmes) on
teaching five of her great grandsons about having pride in Gullah
contributions to American culture and history as well as leading them
along the path of spiritual "seeking" for "the greatest gift you can
give your family is to teach them to keep a close relationship with the
Creator, the source of life and all knowledge." (p. 25) The book is
designed for youth with vibrant illustrations provided by Chaveevah
Banks Ferguson.
The BDC is the only holder in the SCLENDS consortium of this author published title.
Additional Posts Relating to Women's History:
4 March 2021 - Paradise
by Nell and Ora Smith recounts what it was like to live on Hilton Head
Island from the 1960s into the 1990s as development forever changed a
quiet coastal island into the premier resort destination it is today. We
have plenty of copies ( https://sclends.lib.sc.us/eg/opac/record/3220255?locg=104 ) to share.
5 March 2021 - Because
COVID-19 stymied public celebration of the 100th Anniversary of broader
white female suffrage in the United States, the theme for National
Women's History month continues to highlight the campaign to secure
passage of the 19th Amendment. We do so as well. We have returned
"Rightfully Hers" display from the National Archives to the downstairs
lobby for all to enjoy during the month of March 2021.
16 March 2021 - So
just how much do you think that you know about the history of women's
suffrage in the United States? Take this Kids quiz about Suffrage https://www.2020centennial.org/kids-quiz to find out.
"In this 'land of the free' we are burned, tortured, and denied a fair trial, murdered for any imaginary wrong conceived in the brain of the negro-hating white man. There is no redress for us from a government which promised to protect all under its flag. It seems a mystery to me. They say, 'One flag, one nation, one country indivisible.' Is this true? Can we say this truthfully, when one race is allowed to burn, hang, and inflict the most horrible torture weekly, monthly, on another? No, we cannot sing 'My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of Liberty'! It is hollow mockery. The Southland laws are all on the side of the white, and they do just as they like to the negro, whether in the right or not... I do not uphold my race when they do wrong. They ought to be punished, but the innocent are made to suffer as well as the guilty, and I hope the time will hasten when it will be stopped forever ... I hope the day is not far distant when the two races will reside in peace in the Southland, and we will sing with sincere and truthful hearts, 'My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of Liberty, of thee I sing.'"
The Library has printed copies of her memoir and a children's book called The Diary of Susie King Taylor that you can borrow from the Library through our curbside service. Hoopla has an audio-book for children entitled the Memoir of Susie King Taylor: Civil War Nurse that you can borrow electronically and download. The Documenting the American South website contains (https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/taylorsu/taylorsu.html) her document that you can read online as well.
23 March 2021 - Editing
"The Hidden Senator" recording put me in mind
of some of the women in local and state politics who may be less known
today than their accomplishments would indicate. Not only was Harriet
Keyserling the first woman to sit on County Council, she went on to have
a noteworthy state legislative tenure. Read more https://bdcbcl.wordpress.com/.../harriet-keyserling-1922.../ in the "BDCBCL: Links, Lists, and Finding Aids" blog.
26 March 2021 - The
19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote but what did it
matter? The Library of Congress recorded a panel discussion (https://www.loc.gov/item/webcast-9071?loclr=eanw)
about the women's suffrage movement and how it impacts women's rights
today with author Corrine McConnaughy and journalist Elaine Weiss. "The
Impact of the Women's Suffrage Movement Today" runs about 1 hour and 10
minutes.
27 March 2021 - Before
we leave National Women's History Month to highlight poetry, libraries
and preservation of library and archival materials, you may want to view
the National Archives' "Rightfully Hers" online exhibit https://museum.archives.gov/rightfully-hers and the behind-the scenes tour that exhibit curator Corinne Porter gives.
28 March 2021 - March has been National Red Cross Month since 1943 (https://www.redcross.org/about-us/red-cross-month.html). Given that Clara Barton was the founder of the American Red Cross and that she worked in our area during the Civil War and again after the Great Sea Island Hurricane of 1893, we compiled a list of sources about her time in the area https://bdcbcl.wordpress.com/.../09/clara-barton-1821-1912/ for the BDC's "BDCBCL: Links, Lists and Finding Aids" blog.
30 March 2021 - A few days ago I wrote about how editing "The Hidden Senator" recording (now available at https://youtu.be/AEkCSOa6wOU)
put me in mind of some of the women in local and state politics who may
be less known today than their accomplishments deserve. Accordingly, I
updated a Connections blog post first written in March 2016 to include
at least a few more of the Beaufort County women (http://bit.ly/1CqMaef) who have served or who are serving in state and local government.
Posts Related to Significant Dates in Local History:
9 March 2021 - On
March 9, 1862, William C. Gannett and 52 other Northern teachers and
missionaries disembarked from the steamer "Atlantic" at the docks in
Beaufort. And thus began an educational and social endeavor that would
forever change life for the "contrabands of war". Read more about
Gannett and the Port Royal Experiment in a guest post written by his
descendant Mike Gannett http://bit.ly/3adbf3H in Connections.
18 March 2021 - "It's another "Red Letter Local History Day!" Read about Lafayette's visit to Beaufort in Connections, http://bit.ly/1CqMaef the BDC's longest running blog."
Other Post Topics:
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I particularly liked the newspaper clipping from the Palmetto Post from 29 April 1897 that I shared:
13 March 2021 - I informed Facebook followers that the latest "New (and New to Us)" List was available here in Connections.
19 March 2021 - The
BDC has the largest collection of microfilm in the Library system. We
have 19 local newspapers on microfilm; 18 series of primary documents
from the South Carolina Department of Archives and History; some local
and federal government records; and more. Contact us to get the full
list of materials we have on microfilm and/or to arrange a date and time
to come into the Research Room to use this service.
We
posted a notice about bad weather affecting the Research Room schedule
on the afternoon of March 18th, expected schedule changes due to
the recording session for the "Historically Speaking" lecture 2.3 and the upcoming Good Friday closure on various dates within March.
Writing of "The Hidden Senator, Niels Christensen, Jr.", I made reference to the local history program 6 times in March: March 9th, 10th, 21st, 23rd, 25th, and again on March 30th - because the Beaufort County Historical Society and I and the Library really, really, really want you to watch our final episode for Season 2.
It is online on the Library's YouTube Channel for a limited run. Not only will you get to learn about this important local businessman and State Senator, you'll get to see some of the BDC's treasures as you listen to Anne Pollitzer share just a part of her family's unique history.
Reminder: 
If you want to schedule an appointment for the week of April 5 - 9, your best opportunity is to get that request in to me gracec@bcgov.net or 843-255-6446 by 4 pm on Thursday, April 1st.
