Beaufort County Council Minutes, 1888 - 1970

As frequent Connections blog post readers are aware, responses to customer inquiries received by the BDC sometimes end up as catalysts behind certain blog posts. (No customer identification provided because the Library Bill of Rights and the Code of Ethics prohibits us from doing that - unless presented with a warrant from law enforcement.) Today's post arises from just such an inquiry. 

An off-site customer (who shall remain nameless for the reasons outlined above) was interested in an ancestor who sat on a local commission during the late Reconstruction period. I checked a few printed sources in the Research Room for the man's name. We did have an obituary for the man of interest which gave some clues such as his life span dates of 1850 to 1934 and the man's former slave-owner's name. But what other potential sources did we have to share? Hmmm..... 

The Martin Index inside the Research Room is a rudimentary article title index to selected items found in the Palmetto Post, Beaufort Gazette, and a few News & Courier articles for the period 1882 - 1936.  The Martin Index approach is more categorical than specific. For example, the category headings are "Civic Improvements; County Agents; Public Works," etc. rather than "Green, Mary" or "Water Department." The customer's person of interest died in 1934 so I decided that it was better to leave no stone unturned just in case something jumped out at me. I didn't expect to find anything particular to the former Commissioner and I did not. 

I pondered what else that we have that might provide more information. I then pulled the earliest of the County Council Minutes that we have on microfilm in the Research Room to determine how best to advise him on his next steps. While I was surveying the Minutes for the Board of County Commissioners, I decided to "quickly" survey the entire reel even though Minutes Books outside the period in which his person of interest lived were on it. The "quick review" turned into about 45 minutes worth of fast-forwarding and inching through the reel to determine precisely which Minutes book covered precisely which time spans. 

As it turned out, there are precisely 2561 pages worth of Minutes of the Board of County Commissioners, i.e. "County Council" for the period from December 1888 through December 1970. 8 years worth of minutes, through covering January 1910 through December 1918 were not extant at the time that the minutes were microfilmed. To my knowledge those missing minutes have not been found in the intervening 50 years. 

Margin notes made in the manuscript Minutes from 1888 - August 1935 serve as a rudimentary index of sorts to the content of the meetings. However, the margin notes disappear when the Minutes are submitted as typed documents beginning on 3 September 1935. If the customer wants to review the Minutes only during his ancestor's time span, he'll have to look at over 1000 pages of hand-written documents. These Minutes, like the local newspapers on microfilm, are discovered best by what I term the "read and roll"-with-no-guarantee-of-success method: an image by image, page by page, human eyeball and mind engaged search. 

The BDC has the following microfilmed Minutes books for the period 1888 - 1970 to share with our Research Room customers: 

• 4 December 1888 - 31 December 1894 (355 pp.) 
• 23 January 1895 - 23 December 1909 (343 pp.)
• 7 January 1919 - 5 November 1929 (200 pp.)
• 2 December 1929 - 6 August 1935 (192 pp.) 
• 3 September 1935 - 6 June 1944 (240 pp.) 
• 11 July 1944 - 14 June 1949 (136 pp.) 
• 12 July 1949 - 14 December 1954 (151 pp.) 
• 11 January 1955 - 8 December 1959 (172 pp.)
• 12 January 1960 - 12 December 1966 (260 pp.) 
• 3 January 1967 - July 28, 1969 (292 pp.) 
• 11 August 1969 - December 14, 1970 (211 pp.) 

The customer can also "read and roll" through microfilm covering his ancestor's life span in the following newspapers that we make available inside the Research Room. Note: Those that are accessible free of charge online through the Chronicling America website are linked below:  

• Port Royal Standard and Commercial (1874-1876)
• Beaufort Republican and Sea Island Chronicle (1869-1871) - of which only the 21 May 1870 issue is digitized on the Chronicling America website we have considerably more issues on microfilm than that
• Beaufort Republican (12 October 1871 - 16 October 1873)
• Port Royal Commercial and Beaufort County Republican (23 October 1873 - April 1874) 
• Beaufort Tribune (1874-1876) 
• Palmetto Post (15 January 1882 - 27 December 1906)
• Beaufort Gazette (16 July 1903 - 31 March 2015)
• County Democrat (20 July 1910 - 1 December 1911) 

I notified the customer that we had these sources available inside the Research Room and that BDC staff would be happy to set up an appointment for him to do his research. We'll do the same for you. 

Now that the BDC staff is a staff of one, an appointment is a must. Contact bdc@bcgov.net or call 843-255-6446 to make the arrangements. Be sure to allow up to 72 hours before getting a response. Please note: BDC staff does not monitor business communications when the Library is closed or when staff is out of the building.