New (and New to Us) Materials Received in March - April 2022

There was something of a flourish of new (and new to us) materials arriving in March and April 2022 - so many that my display cabinets overflowed in the final days. The image shown was taken on April 28th and does not include the items that arrived from Technical Services on the last work day. As per usual, some were purchases and some were gifts; some were recently published materials; some were copies of much older published materials. Some were second copies that I acquired on purpose - just for their local rarity. Some were a different edition of an item already in the Research Room. All must fit the rubric for acquisition and permanent retention in the BDC whether by purchase or by donation.

I made a few purchases over the past two months. On October 20, 1862, three men disembarked from the steamer, Ericsson, and together they "would have more influence on the future Beaufort District than any other wartime arrivals" (Wise and Rowland, vol. 2, p. 157). The Lost President : A.D. Smith and the Hidden History of Radical Democracy in Civil War America (2019) by Ruth Dunley is a short and fascinating biography of one of them, US Tax Commissioner Abram Smith. I added the title to the Local history sections at Beaufort, Hilton Head, and St. Helena Branch Libraries in case you'd like to read it at home.

Salmon P. Chase: Lincoln's Vital Rival (2021) is important to Beaufort District's own history and to the Beaufort County Library's own history. As Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury, it was Chase who declared "We do not make war on libraries!" and prevented the sale of the Beaufort College collection. Author Walter Stahr's specialty is Civil War biography. Hilton Head Branch purchased a copy for its general collection that Beaufort County Library cardholders can borrow as well.

I purchased Platz, Plats, Platts, Platt of South Carolina : Over Two Hundred Sixty-five Years of a Salkehatchie River Family volume 1 (1995-2017) to add to our genealogical stacks. All copies of this title held by SCLENDS libraries are stored in Reference collections.

I discovered in updating a very, very old BDC WordPress post that the BDC lacked some important scholarly works about Beaufort's native son Leon Keyserling and his approach to economics. Therefore, I purchased three books to remedy that situation: Designing Economic Policy: An Analytical Biography of Leon H. Keyserling by W. Robert Brazelton (2001); Leon H. Keyserling : A Progressive Economist by Donald K. Pickens (2009); and The Coming of Keynesianism to America: Conversations with the Founders of Keynesian Economics edited by David C. Colander and Harry Landreth (1996) that includes a transcription of an interview with Leon Keyserling done in June 1984. The BDC is the only library within SCLENDS to hold these three titles.

The Friends of the Beaufort Library were the source for River of Words: Musings on Port Royal Sound Through Poetry and Art produced by Students of Beaufort County School Distirct (2016 ) that joins other issues of the series and "Goin' to the Lowlands II" program for the Michigan Support Group for Penn Center's fundraiser held at the Detroit Yacht Club in 1993. They also let me pick the Speech of Hon. Wade Hampton, of South Carolina, in the Senate of the United States on Senate Bill No. 398 to Aid in the Establishment ane [sic] Temporary Support of Common Schools delivered on March 27, 1884. 

Hilton Head Branch Library transferred a few items from its holdings for permanent retention in the BDC Research Room. The Hilton Head Dolphin Book written and illustrated by Leslie E. Parker, Jr. (1995) should come in quite handy during the BDC's virtual contribution to the "Oceans of Possibilities" Summer Reading Program 2022. It joins his The Hilton Head Turtle Book (1997) and The Hilton Head Alligator Book (1994).

I was happy to be able to add the 2001 Membership Directory of the Hilton Head Island Chamber of Commerce. Those rosters of members grow in historical and genealogical value through the years.

I was thrilled to get a critical volume to complete a set. Though the BDC has the first 3 volumes of the David Duncan Wallace's classic History of South Carolina (American Historical Society, 1934) we lacked volume 4. I got the Biographical volume to complete the set from a donor - all 1000+ pages of it. It is chocked full of genealogical related material - so much in fact that I decided to add it to the public area of the Research Room for ease of customer use. The odd thing is the arrangement of volume 4: it is not chronological nor alphabetical nor by county of residence nor by city of residence. One must use the index to locate the biographical entries. On a personal note, I found one of my maternal ancestral sides in it. If you think that one or more of your ancestors who were alive before 1934 might be in it, contact me and I'll look in the index to see: bdc@bcgov.net.

I added different editions of several titles already in the Research Room from Friends of the Beaufort Library and Hilton Head Island Branch Library donations: the 1987 revised edition of Plantations of the Low Country by N. Jane Iseley, William P. Baldwin, Jr. and Agnes L. Baldwin; the 1867 edition of Carolina Sports by Land and Water by William Elliott; the original 1938 edition of Plantations of the Carolina Low Country by Samuel Gaillard Stoney; the 2002 edition of Gullah Cultural Legacies by Emory S. Campbell; a revised edition of Nell S. Graydon's classic Tales of Edisto (1986); the 6th edition of the Cruising Guide to Coastal South Carolina and Georgia (2007); the Polk City Directory for Beaufort (2021) and the WPA Guide to the Palmetto State reprinted by the University of South Carolina Press in 1988 that includes a new introduction by South Carolina's pre-eminent living historian Walter B. Edgar.   

Those who know me in person know that cooking is not high on my list of enjoyable tasks - so it's always been a bit ironic that I have spent so much of my career here collecting recipe books for permanent retention. Due to the very local nature of most of the cookbooks housed here, I added an extra copy of both Out of Beaufort Kitchens by the St. Helena Council No. 43 Daughters of America, Beaufort, S.C. (1964) and Favorite Recipes of Beaufort's Brenda Arts & Crafts Club (1960). 

Other donations that became copy 2s were Program. People. Place: The Making of a Library for St. Helena Island (2009) and the Hill-Donnelly's Hilton Head-Beaufort South Carolina and Vicinity Cross-Reference Directory (1991) 

Journals arriving were the donated May River Review: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal from the University of South Carolina Beaufort's English Department (Spring 2018) and the purchased latest issue of the South Carolina Historical Magazine (January 2019). Volume 120, issue #1 contains a fascinating article by Peter N. Moore about Native Americans before and at the time of the earliest European settlements entitled "Indigenous Power and Collapse on the Lower South Carolina Coast, Precontact - 1684", pp. 4 - 29. Most of the materials he cites in his article are available in the Research Room by advance appointment. [The latest issue of SCHM and the Wallace volume 4 mentioned above bring the total of items in the public area of the Research Room up to 684.]

An off-site reference inquiry turned into an on-site Research session and a later mailed in donation of additional vertical file materials about Martha Sleeper, whose obituary is shown on the right. What an interesting woman.

As most of you know, the BDC does not purchase novels but I have been known to add a few donated novel titles to the collection as an indication of the literary history of this area. This time I have added two titles, Someone Knows my Name by Lawrence Hill (2007) and The Chronicles of Willow Point by E.T. Baysden, Jr. (2019).  

I highly recommend Someone Knows My Name as a book club title. Hill tells the story of a kidnapped young African girl who is sold to a planter on St. Helena Island. She escapes to the British ultimately becoming one of their scribes recording the names of those Black Loyalists who are freed for their service to the Crown and relocated to Nova Scotia. As we get ever closer to the 250th Anniversary commemoration of the American Revolution, I expect that this title will rise on the Library system's book club roster of titles to explore. (Longer term residents might recall Hill's book talk at Beaufort Branch, sponsored by the Consulate General of Canada in Atlanta office that I had to cede to them - because the BDC doesn't "do" novels. Sigh. I don't remember the year - though I know it was before 2010 because the BDC was still downstairs when he spoke and Rosalyn Browne was still at Penn Center at the time. Geez, but I did hate to have to pass on his Book Talk.)  

The Chronicle of Willow Point looks more like a history than a novel, particularly on the basis of its subtitle "A Lowcountry Family in the Century Following Cotton and Rice" and the surnames of its main characters. The author moved to Beaufort County in 1970 and worked as the chief marketing officer for a number of the plantation residential communities before his retirement: Sea Pines Resort, Callawassie Island, Spring Island, Oldfield Club, and Palmetto Bluff. You'll recognize the references to key mid-20th century events and places in the narrative.