BDC Local History Programs in May 2022

The BDC is co-sponsoring two local history programs during May. 

Nelle and Ora Smith will give an Author Book Talk about Paradise: Memories of Hilton Head in the Early Days on Tuesday, May 17, 2022 in the St. Helena Branch Meeting Room, 6355 Jonathan Francis Sr. Road.

Their talk is part of Season 5 of the joint Beaufort History Museum/Beaufort County Library Local History series coordinated by the Library’s special collections and archives unit, the Beaufort District Collection.

When John Gettys Smith was hired as the public relations man for Charles Fraser's Sea Pines Plantation Company in 1963, he moved his young family to the Carolina lowcountry – much to the horror of his parents and in-laws. His wife Nelle McCants Smith and their daughter Ora Elliott Smith will share what it was like to live on Hilton Head from the early 1960s into 1996.

Nelle opened the first shop in Harbour Town and ran it for 25 years. Nelle helped start the first Sunday school at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, a Cub Scout troop, the PTA, and the library. Her husband was the assistant general chairman under Fraser for the Heritage Golf Classic for the PGA tournament’s first five years. He also designed the distinctive plaid worn by the champion of the tournament. Everyone – including 8 year old Ora – had to pitch in to help during those early years - and she continued to pitch in working with her mother at Nell's Harbour Shop, and later owning and managing a second Nell's Shop at Wexford Plantation. 

As Nelle explained to newspaper columnist David Lauderdale recently: “If we lacked something we felt we needed, we just started it!” In other words, the women were part of the “can-do generation” that helped transform Hilton Head Island from a quiet coastal island with only a couple of thousand inhabitants on it into the premier resort destination it is today. 

Listen, laugh, and learn with these two indomitable ladies of the Lowcountry. Registration required. Space is limited to 44 people. Sign up opens online May 3, 2022 through the Beaufort History Museum website’s events page.  Registration will close when room capacity is reached.

Two days later, the next installment of the "Historically Speaking" series co-sponsored with the Beaufort County Historical Society will be held in the First Presbyterian Church's Fellowship Hall at 1201 North Street in downtown Beaufort. Featured speaker, Dr. Vernon Burton, will lecture on "Beaufort's Response to Alternative Facts in the Civil War: First, Second and Third Reconstructions."

6 May 2022 Update: The direct link to the registration page is https://www.eventbrite.com/e/beauforts-response-to-alternative-facts-during-reconstruction-tickets-332765198667. 

Ninety Six, South Carolina native Dr. Vernon Burton will share his insights about how the course of Reconstruction was just different in Beaufort County. His academic accomplishments are legion. He is the Judge Matthew J. Perry Jr. Distinguished Professor of History at Clemson University and a professor of sociology, Pan African studies and computer science. He spent 34 years as a professor of history, sociology and African American studies at the University of Illinois, where he is also an emeritus University Distinguished Teacher and Scholar and University Scholar. Burton served as president of the Southern Historical Association and the Agricultural History Society. He is also Executive Director of the College of Charleston's Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World program. A prolific writer, Burton has authored or edited 20 books, more than 200 articles and numerous digital humanities projects. Locally he is probably best known as the author of Penn Center : A History Preserved (2014).  The BDC has copies of both In My Father's House are Many Mansions : Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina (1985) and Toward the Meeting of the Waters: Currents in the Civil Rights Movement of South Carolina during the Twentieth Century (2008) which he co-edited with Winfred B. Moore, Jr. His title The Age of Lincoln (2007) won the Chicago Tribune Heartland Literary Award for Nonfiction and was selected for Book of the Month Club, History Book Club and Military Book Club. In 2017, Burton received the Governor’s Award from South Carolina Humanities. 

This session also happens to be the Beaufort County Historical Society’s Annual Meeting. Registration is required and space is limited. Sign up opens online May 5, 2022 on Eventbrite. (The Beaufort County Historical Society uses Eventbrite for its registration only events.) Registration will close when room capacity is reached.