August 2022 Posts to the BDC's Facebook Page

In keeping with my 2022 - 2023 performance evaluation goal of "Social media posts will be reduced by 66% to free up time for preservation and archival projects," and the fact that I was out for 5 weeks recovering from surgery, I didn't make all that many Facebook posts in August. Most were related to the "Materials Monday" and "Black History Note Wednesday" series as you can see ...    

August 1, 2022 - "50 Shades of Beige: Materials Monday:" William Elliott's Carolina Sports by Land and Water is considered a sports literature classic. It has stayed in print since 1846. The USC Press reprint of 1994 with a new introduction by Theodore Rosengarten (author of Tombee) has a beige, brown and red cover - which is way I am featuring it here today.

The BDC has a first edition copy and several other reprint editions in the Research Room. We also share more recent reprint editions through the Local History sections at the Branch Libraries. In other words, there is no reason at all why you shouldn't check out "Carolina Sports".

August 8, 2022 - "50 Shades of Beige: Materials Monday": In Seth Rockman's review of Making a Slave State: Political Development in Early South Carolina by Ryan A. Quintana (2018) he opines that the Quintana "makes the social history of enslaved people central to the processes of state building and the political economy of capitalism. Indeed, the book's great value is its recognition of enslaved people as crucial historical actors whose everyday lives created the infrastructures of the state."

August 15, 2022 - "50 Shades of Beige: Materials Monday": A great many people are interested in family history - particularly if someone else does the work for them and all they have to do is listen to the stories compiled from the researcher's work.

(I too am guilty of this. Most of what I know about my ancestors comes from compiled genealogies written by others.)

Among the genealogical books held in the Research Room for family historians to use as a reference is Abigail's Story, Tides at the Doorstep: The Mackays, LaRoches, Jenkinses, and Chisolms of Low Country South Carolina, 1671-1897 compiled by William Greer Albergotti, III (1999), a tome of 566 pages. The index is 55 pages worth of 4 column entries of names, averaging 75 entries per column, a lot of those using the same first -often common - name (or first and second - often common - names) over several generations. There is no way that I would be able to equitably unravel these multiple Richards or Thomases or Sarahs or Elizabeths in the time I have left on this earth - much less in the time I have left in the employ of the Beaufort County Council.

Therefore, the best that I can do for those who do not undertake the work themselves is to send a few cellphone photos of a family history book's index as I did a few months ago for a woman who lives in Nebraska but who had South Carolina ancestors. She was not able to visit the Research Room to review this title in person.

JSYK: We have approximately 15 linear feet worth of compiled family histories directly relating to families that lived for two generations or more in Beaufort District for our Research Room customers to use.

August 22, 2022 - Today is a great day for a 2-fer-1 deal: I have a "50 Shades of Beige" selection for my choice for August's Diversify Your Reading Challenge. Learn more about Ann Head's life, career and her best known title, Mr. and Mrs. Bo Jo Jones that is credited as kicking off the Young Adult literary genre in Connections.

August 29, 2022 - Materials Monday: "50 Shades of Beige:" The Rev. Archibald Simpson kept manuscript journals of his life from 1748 until 1784 that have been edited down by Peter N. Moore to 2 beige colored volumes of material. References to Simpson's preaching and ministry in Beaufort can be found in volume 1 on pages xvi, 97, 278, and 288n53 and in volume 2 on pages 2-4, 9, 12, 21, 170, and 230. He also wrote about his time in Indian Land and the people he served and observed therein - which in his case means the people and environs of Prince William's Parish and its Stoney Creek Independent Church. The journals would be virtually unintelligible is not for Moore's annotations and explanations of the interrelationships between many of Simpson's flock. Part 2 recounts the many unsuccessful pursuits the widower made among the area's women between 1765 and his ignominious return to Scotland in 1772 having failed to secure a second wife.

Rev. Simpson would return to South Carolina 1783 and would write of the Revolution's aftermath in Beaufort District: "The British & the American armies having carried off all my fine breed of horses, and Several hundred head of cattle ... Was all day entertained with the account of the most horrid transactions of the British Army & the Loyalists, during the war." (Extract of diary entries of Tuesday, November 4, 1783)

You can make an appointment to read Rev. Simpson's diaries in the Research Room: bdc@bcgov.net or 843-255-6468.

August 3, 2022 - "Black History Note:" A more contemporary version of the Trial of Sundry Negroes ... mentioned here on 13 July is Designs Against Charleston by Edward Pearson (1999). On July 2, 1822, officials in Charleston, South Carolina, executed a free black carpenter named Denmark Vesey for planning what would have been the most extensive slave revolt in U.S. history. Pearson provides a fascinating and comprehensive account of the Vesey conspiracy that uses both primary and secondary sources including the words of the accused.

August 10, 2022 - "Black History Note:" Black Majority : Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion by Peter H. Wood (1996, 1975) was a groundbreaking thesis in 1972; an important book of 1975; and has remained in print since. Wood explored the consequences of importing the largest single group of non-English-speaking migrants to the North American colonies on United States history through a thorough and penetrating case study of the Palmetto State during the period. The BDC has a copy but there are also plenty of copies that you can check out through the SCLENDS consortium.

August 17, 2022 - "Black History Note:" The Risen Phoenix : Black Politics in the post-Civil War South by Luis-Alejandro Dinnella-Borrego highlights the careers of six African American legislators, our own Robert Smalls included. The book argues that African American congressmen effectively served their constituents' interests while also navigating their way through a tumultuous post-Civil War Southern political environment. Black congressmen represented their constituents by advancing a policy agenda encompassing strong civil rights protections, economic modernization, and expanded access to education. As these black leaders searched for effective ways to respond to white supremacy, disenfranchisement, segregation, and lynching, they challenged the barriers of prejudice, paving the way for future black struggles for equality in the twentieth century. The BDC has a reference copy in the Research Room but there are two copies that you can borrow from other parts of the BCL.

August 24, 2022 - "Black History Note:" One of my favorite books in the Research Room is Camera Man's Journey: Julian Dimock's South edited by Thomas Johnson and Nina Root (2002). The photographs compiled here are of African Americans taken around Columbia and Beaufort, S.C. between 1904 and 1911.

There are plenty of copies in the local history sections at the Branch Libraries to borrow as well.

BTW: The American Museum of Natural History has the originals of these and about 3300 more images taken by Julian Dimock in its collection.

August 31, 2022 - "Local History Red Letter Day" and "Black History Note" are rolled up in one: Find out why frightened people white and colored fell to their knees singing and praying 136 years ago today in the latest Connections blogpost.

A couple of posts referred to the "Tide of Death" local history program I did at Bluffton Branch on Saturday, August 27th - which had 27 people in attendance. 27 people is a very satisfactory turnout for a local history program on a Saturday morning south of the Broad River.

August 25, 2022 - The 1950 Census Indexing update: It is fully indexed on the Ancestry Library Edition website - and in record time. The downside is that access to Ancestry Library Edition has returned to its pre-Covid state, that is, one must use it on one of the Library's public computers.

FamilySearch.org's 1950 Census project remains underway "indexed by computers, reviewed by people" with 80% of the states and territories all done. South Carolina's returns are completely indexed.