Materials Monday 2023: Uniquely BDC Series

I always say to anyone who will listen – and some of those who won’t – that it is the BDC that is the uniquely local service unit of the Beaufort County Library. Other cultural heritage institutions and organizations play their roles of course, and as some of you already know often we collaborate on particular programs or serve customers we might have in common. But when it comes to day-to-day delivery and collecting for the future, no one else supports present and future researchers into Beaufort District’s past quite like we do.  And access is free of charge and anyone over age 12 who makes an advance appointment can review our materials on the topics of their interests as those relate to local history, people, places, structures, events, and themes. What a deal! 

In the course of doing my daily work, I have stumbled across more than enough unique materials to (successfully) argue with a plethora of examples this year that there is considerable value to the community we serve in having a dedicated special collection of local history related materials taken care of by and shared through a public library. I hope that this series will help convince others that the Beaufort District Collection provides a unique and important role in the life of Beaufort County.

I took too many Mondays off in 2022 so I needed to get write a 2-fer deal for the first Monday of 2023 to complete the "50 Shades of Beige" theme of 2022. Thus, I featured a very beige colored and rare government document about funding for schools. The BDC has the only copy of 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" in the SCLENDS consortium.

The Senator (and former Governor of SC and formerly richest man in the South) saw illiteracy as "the greatest danger threatening the permanency of our institutions." He was requesting Federal financial aid for schools, particularly those in South Carolina, that were struggling to fund education for all children, white and Black, even as the state's tax base dwindled and the school-age population surged. On this point, he was in opposition to the views of the other US Senator from South Carolina at the time, Matthew Calbraith Butler.