June 1 was the monthly overview.
June 2: "Finding Aid Friday": I choose the Reeves Collection of Stuart Family Papers because there is a reference to a duel that Neil Baxley talked about during the BDC's most recent local history program. This archival collection consists primarily of photocopies of family correspondence between Claudia Smith Stuart (1802-1876) about family matters, social affairs in Beaufort and Charleston, S.C., schooling at Harvard, West Point, and seminaries in Spartanburg, S.C. and Alexandria, VA, secession, and the Civil War. Reconstruction Era documents mostly refer to family poverty and difficulties post-war. Related families include Heyward, Rhett, Taber and Walker. There's plenty more about the content of this archival collection in the BDC's WordPress blog.
June 9: "Finding Aid Friday:" At long last the American Association of University Women Beaufort Branch records are in the BDCBCL's Links, Lists and Finding Aids blog due to the work of former BDC associate Amanda Forbes (2018) and current BDC assistant Olivia Santos (May 2023) with a little editing by me this week. The AAUW is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to education, cultural opportunities, and self-development for women. The Beaufort Branch has been active since 1959. (JSYK: Once Olivia leaves I may have to discontinue this particular series. Her skills have been absolutely critical to this series.)
June 23: "Finding Aid Friday:" The Research Room has a 1976 Landmark Conference award winning scrapbook about the many projects sponsored by the Beaufort County American Revolution Bicentennial Commission (BCARBC) in the mid-1970s. With the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution coming up fast, I think that a review of what they did with very, very little money and lots of local cooperation could inspire others of possibilities for the celebrations soon to begin.
Heads up: No Finding Aid Friday next week. I'll be out of the office because I am co-hosting the "African Presence in Colonial Lowcountry" local history program presented by Prof. Meldon Hollis at Bluffton Branch this Saturday - which means that I will meet my 40 hours on Thursday June 29th. Olivia will be in the Research Room to handle any customers with appointments on Friday, June 30th (Contact: bdc@bcgov.net; 843-255-6468 to make the advance arrangements.) Thus, the next scheduled FAF will be on July 7th.
And speaking of FAFs going forward: Olivia's been absolutely critical to this project while also being great at taking care of the daily needs of our In-Room customers. I have always prided myself on delivering high quality reference services for our in-room and off-site customers. Writing and posting Finding Aids remains one of the items on my retirement exit list so the process will continue - just not nearly as quickly or often as the two of us have managed to do sharing the work load. Because arranging, describing, preserving, and creating a Finding Aid from scratch or editing a draft Finding Aid by one of my former assistants for an archival collection is a time and research intensive activity, it may well be months before I can re-start the weekly FAF posts. Therefore, Finding Aid Friday posts after July 7th will be intermittent until I can find and train a suitable successor to fill Olivia's current position.
June 5: "Uniquely BDC: Materials Monday:" Like the most recent "Finding Aid Fridays" post, today's "Uniquely BDC" selection relates to dueling in Beaufort District. A Sermon Upon Duelling Together with the Constitution of the Grahamville Association for the Suppression of Duelling was delivered from the pulpit by the Rev. Arthur Wigfall of the Holy Trinity Church in Grahamville near Ridgeland in 1856. It was a pamphlet of 20 pages. Three members of the Association, H.M. Parker, T.J.S. Farr, and R.W. Seabrook, coordinated the publication of the document by printer A.E. Miller of Charleston. By page 16, Rev. Wigfall has hit his stride:
The Constitution consists of 10 articles. Articles 1, 2, 3, 4, and 8 cover organizational structure and officer duties. Articles 5 and 6 state that members have the responsibility "to cause parties leaving this Parish to engage in a duel, to be arrested wherever they may be found" and "to cause legal proceedings to be instituted against any citizen of this Parish who shall kill another in a duel, as a murderer -- and also against the seconds as accessories thereto." Article 7 encouraged immediate action against news of impending duels. Article 9 allowed any citizen to join - as long as you interpret citizen to mean a local white adult male resident; and Article 10 spelled out the duties of members: "Each person subscribing his name to this Constitution shall be considered as having most solemnly pledged himself, not under any circumstances, to engage in a duel himself, nor to aid, nor abet, any other in doing so ; and under all circumstances to the extent of his ability, to sustain and act under this Constitution, according to the true intent and meaning thereof." (p. 20)
We have only a photocopy that came to us in the purchase of the Hayes Collection in the early 2000s. Neither
Archive.org nor
Hathitrust.org have digital copies of this title. There are no listings in
Worldcat.org for it either. Not even the Library of Congress seems to have one. Given that I value content over format, the photocopy we have here in the Research Room is a rare and treasured item of local significance.
June 6: "All Together Now" is the theme for the Summer Reading Program this year. The goal is to remind us humans that we are more alike than different - and perhaps why more alike than we might suppose.
Family Tree Magazine sent me an email a few months ago that linked to an article explaining "What is Pedigree Collapse?" That article said, in part: "In a 1999 paper, Yale University statistician Joseph Chang used a mathematical model to show how all modern Europeans, except recent transplants, have a common ancestor who lived about [the year] 1400. Go back to [the year] 1000, and 20 percent of adult Europeans alive then have no descendants today. However, each of the remaining 80 percent is an ancestor of every European alive today. That’s a lot of cousins to look for!"
I think that I'll just stick with the 18 first cousins I know and love - though in all honesty, 1/3 of them are simultaneously my first and first cousins once removed. (My Daddy and his first cousin Rodgers married sisters, Sara and Edith). Another example of pedigree collapse in modern times, right?
If you're interested in exploring your own potential pedigree collapse, you can now access the Library's subscription to the Ancestry Library Edition database inside our facilities on Library computers or on your own laptop. It's as easy as 1-2-3:
1) Bring your device to a BCL location.2) Access the Library's Wi-Fi network.3) Search for your people on ALE on the BCL's dime.
Notes: I haven't seen a similar study for persons of Asian or African or aboriginal origins but it is not unreasonable to expect to find similar commonality in other human populations. The pedigree collapse image is by Jayne Ekins.
June 10: Two weeks to the "African Presence in Colonial Lowcountry" at Bluffton Branch. We hope that you'll come out for what is certain to be an interesting and educational program.
June 12: "Uniquely BCL: Materials Monday:" Today's selection is in honor of our next local history program. Rituals of Resistance: African Atlantic Religion in Kongo and the Lowcountry South in the Era of Slavery by Jason R. Young (2007) explores the religious and ritual practices that linked West-Central Africa with the Lowcountry region of Georgia and South Carolina during the era of slavery. Analyzing the historical exigencies of slavery and the slave trade that sent not only men and women but also cultural meanings, signs, symbols, and patterns across the Atlantic, Young argues that religion operated as a central form of resistance against slavery and the ideological underpinnings that supported it.... When slaves acted outside accepted parameters - in transmigration, spirit possession, ritual internment, and conjure - Young explains, they attacked not only the condition of being a slave, but also the systems of modernity and scientific rationalism that supported slavery....Young's work expands traditional scholarship on slavery to include both the extensive work done by African historians and current interdisciplinary debates in cultural studies, anthropology, and literature....Young's groundbreaking work gestures toward broader themes and connections, using the case of the Kongo and the Lowcountry to articulate the development of a much larger African Atlantic space that connected peoples, cultures, languages, and lives on and across the ocean's waters.
We have copies of this title in the BDC Research Room, the Gullah Geechee Room at the St. Helena Branch Library, and a copy that you can check out from St. Helena Branch's general adult book section.
Reminder: I'm out of the office so there's no Black History Note on Wednesday nor a Finding Aid Friday post this week.
June 19: "Uniquely BCL: Materials Monday" In honor of our program at Bluffton Branch this coming Saturday, I chose Strange New Land: Africans in Colonial America by Peter H. Wood (Oxford University Press, 2003) for today's selection. Wood chronicles the presence and contributions of Africans transported without choice to America from 1526 up to the Revolutionary War. Thousands of Africans encountered alien sights, sounds, tastes and smells as they were forced into enslavement. Over time, they adapted to and forced adaptations in the dominant colonial European immigrant cultures.
The BDC Research Room and the Gullah Geechee Reference Collection at St. Helena Branch Library have copies of this important title.
I invite you to attend a lecture about the "African Presence in Colonial Lowcountry" with Meldon Hollis on Saturday, June 24th, from 10 AM to Noon at the Bluffton Branch Library. You may call 843-255-6503 to pre-register.
June 21: "Black History Note:" In honor of our upcoming program on Saturday at Bluffton Branch with Prof. Hollis, today's selection is Black Majority : Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion by Peter H. Wood (1996, 1975). It 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.
June 24: Meet me over at the Bluffton Branch this morning at 10 AM for another BDC@ the Branches local history program. Anyone interested in the topic du jour is welcomed to attend. The Bluffton Meeting Room seats up to 120 people - so I think that we'll be able to accommodate you.
June 26: "Uniquely BDC: Materials Monday:" Today's selection is in honor of this past Saturday's local history program, "African Presence in Colonial Lowcountry" with Meldon Hollis at Bluffton Branch.
When black women were brought from Africa to the New World as slave laborers, their value was determined by their ability to work as well as their potential to bear children, who by law would become the enslaved property of the mother's master. In Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery, Jennifer L. Morgan examines for the first time how African women's labor in both senses became intertwined in the English colonies. Beginning with the ideological foundations of racial slavery in early modern Europe, Laboring Women traverses the Atlantic, exploring the social and cultural lives of women in West Africa, slaveowners' expectations for reproductive labor, and women's lives as workers and mothers under colonial slavery. Challenging conventional wisdom, Morgan reveals how expectations regarding gender and reproduction were central to racial ideologies, the organization of slave labor, and the nature of slave community and resistance. Taking into consideration the heritage of Africans prior to enslavement and the cultural logic of values and practices recreated under the duress of slavery, she examines how women's gender identity was defined by their shared experiences as agricultural laborers and mothers, and shows how, given these distinctions, their situation differed considerably from that of enslaved men. Telling her story through the arc of African women's actual lives-from West Africa, to the experience of the Middle Passage, to life on the plantations-she offers a thoughtful look at the ways women's reproductive experience shaped their roles in communities and helped them resist some of the more egregious effects of slave life. Presenting a highly original, theoretically grounded view of reproduction and labor as the twin pillars of female exploitation in slavery, Laboring Women is a distinctive contribution to the literature of slavery and the history of women. We have the only copy of this title within the SCLENDS consortium.
June 29: It's not too late to get cracking on the "All Together Now" (ending July 31) and/or AHA Summer Reading Challenge 2023 (ending on Labor Day). Connections has reading recommendations for you - and if none of the suggestions there suit your fancy, contact us for others.
SPECIAL EVENT
June 3: Happy Birthday, Lobeco Branch! Hip! Hip! Hooray!!
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In honor of Lobeco Branch's 20th anniversary celebration, I did some scouring of the Research Room in search of images, documents, maps, and articles about the history of the building and of Northern Beaufort County. JSYK: I had help with the lobby display. I took the top 2/3rds for surrogates from the BDC archives about the renovation of the building as a library, 2001 - 2003 while Chantal filled the bottom shelf with images and info about the Lobeco Branch Library in 2023.
The meeting room windows and door cover snippets of the area's history.
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You can pick up "A Very Brief History of the Lobeco Branch Library Building;" and flyers of recommended materials about the history of Northern Beaufort County and a different one about Gardens Corner's own Jonathan Green, artist and illustrator of national renown during your visit later today - or contact me and I'll email you an electronic version of all three sometime next week.
As it turned out, I discovered so much material that there's a brand spanking new "Prince William's Prince William’s Parish, 1745 – 1865: Selected Links & Materials" list on the BDCBCL Links, Lists, and Finding Aid blog. Check it out. This means that there are specific lists of local history material about Bluffton, Daufuskie Island, Hilton Head Island, Mitchelville, and Prince William's Parish posted in this blog now.
Enjoy!
June 7: "Black History Note:" June is African American Music Appreciation Month and I opine that there's no better place to start than with the history of spirituals. We have plenty of copies of Gullah Spirituals: The Sound of Freedom and Protest in the South Carolina Sea Islands by Eric Sean Crawford and Bessie Foster Crawford (University of South Carolina Press, 2021) to share in the Research Room and local history sections at the BCL Branch libraries. For supplemental edification, check out our "Praise Houses in Gullah Religious and Social Practices" bibliography in the BDCBCL: Links, Lists and Finding Aids blog.
June 28: "Black History Note:" Because our next local history program is 3 weeks away on the subject of Reconstruction era politics, today's entry is a short-listed Pulitzer Prize for History nominated book Capitol Men by Philip Dray (2008). Capitol Men leads off with a chapter about Beaufort's own Robert Smalls entitled "Boat Thief." Dray views Reconstruction from the perspective of the first Black Congressmen. There are plenty of copies in the local history sections at the Branch Libraries for you to borrow. As a personal aside, I was thrilled to be thanked by name and first in Professor Dray's Acknowledgments. Now that may be because I was the only BDC staff for a lot of years here and all the other special collections and archives units where he researched had more staff - or it may be because it was I who brought the story of Robert Smalls to his attention in the first instance. Either way, it still makes me feel like that a return to my Librarian/Archivist career post-young-children hasn't been a complete waste of time or energy.
June 8: Beloved BDC docent Kathy added another 995 obituaries from the 1992 local newspapers to our Online Obituary Index. The Library has more than 30,000 entries now - which means that I need to get an update to the web page text in motion. She's started indexing the Beaufort Gazette and Island Packet obituaries for the year 1993 - only 22 more years worth of BG and IP newspapers to go!
June 20: Olivia's "Favorites Part 2" was posted in Connections earlier this month. See what and why she chose these items from the Research Room for her final display case.
June 22: The National Archives has recently digitized some of the Plans of Military Posts in the United States. I narrowed down to those relating to South Carolina and then started drilling down to ones relating to posts in the former Beaufort District. Among those I found on page 1 of the hits page were numerous images of items related to Fort Fremont and the Spanish-American War era hospital and barracks on Hilton Head Island. Cut-and-paste my search into your browser and explore!
June 27: Heads up: All units of the Beaufort County Library will be closed for Independence Day, Tuesday, July 4, 2023).
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