New (and New to Us) Materials Received May - November 2023

Because it's time to make a change in featured new and new to us items, here's a brief run-down of materials that have arrived in the BDC Research Room since May 1st.  As per usual, it's a mixture of purchased and gifted items. The BDC has always been fortunate to have supporters and advocates who assist us by giving us first dibs on some of their books and family possessions. 

We are grateful to Anne Christensen Pollitzer for donating us a copy of her "Great-Grandmother Abbie M. Holmes Christensen's Family Photo Album" that she compiled. It is quite charming and supplements other Christensen Family related materials here in the Research Room. In fact, we have a bibliography of materials about Abbie Holmes Christensen in our BDCBCL: Lists, Links, and Finding Aids Blog in case you'd like to learn more about this quite untraditional 19th Century woman and her influential family. 

Hollis Phillips brought us a copy of a genealogical study of the Priester, Peeples, Cope, Mixon, Robinson, and Tuten families at the behest of the family of author Jane Priester Hawkins. Lives and Legends (1987, 1991) joins other genealogies for these families previously in our holdings.  

We were delighted to receive a copy of As We Remember: A History of the Woman's Relief Corps in Beaufort, SC by Najmah Thomas and Fred Washington, Sr. and the Woman's Relief Corps, No. 1 of South Carolina (2023) from the authors. The group is a national organization established as an official auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic, an Union Civil War veterans organization. The WRC provided critical support for veterans and their families particularly during the late 19th century. The Beaufort WRC was founded on April 22, 1889 and re-organized as the Fred Washington, Sr. Woman's Relief Corps No. 1 on July 26, 1998. 

Novelist Nancy Ritter gave us a copy of her book, Slack Tide (2023), to add to our small fiction section. 

Beaufort Branch gave us their copy of the South Carolina Legislative Manual for 2023 after the State House closed its session in June. As you may recall, the BDC has a rather good collection of the manuals. We also received more posters to add to our vertical files or growing poster collection. 

From the ever generous Friends of the Beaufort Library we accessioned A Field Guide to Sea Island [sic] by H.E. Taylor Schoettle, illustrated by Carol Johnson (1987) about the natural coastal flora, fauna, and environment; The 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 Bluffton Middle School yearbooks to add to our growing collection of school annuals; and an Accountants' Report for Hilton Head's Broad Creek Public Service District (1984).  

I purchased Charleston and Savannah: The Rise, Fall, and Reinvention of Two Rival Cities by Thomas D. Wilson (2023) to provide context for Beaufort's situation between these much larger competitors for economic and political power through the years. We also have author's The Oglethorpe Plan: Enlightenment Design in Savannah and Beyond (2012) and The Ashley Cooper Plan: The Founding of Carolina and the Origins of Southern Political Culture (2016). 

Because Tangled Vines: Power, Privilege, and the Murdaugh Family Murders by John Glatt (2023) included more than 20 pages worth of material about the boat accident that killed Mallory Beach, I bought it.  I think that the most important thing Glatt wrote was how to correctly pronounce Alex Murdaugh's name - "Ellick Murdock" - in the prologue on page 3.  One of my pet peeves is when non-natives try to "correct" our Correct Mispronunications! Otherwise, I couldn't be less personally interested in the ins-and-outs and twists-and-turns in the Murdaugh saga. The murders happened in Colleton County and therefore fall outside the BDC's collection development policy. The law office was started after Hampton County was formed from the western side of the Charleston and Savannah Railroad tracks in 1878 -- before the Murdaugh Family began its climb to prominence. Again, therefore the topic falls outside the BDC's collection development policy. That said, though, we do have several vertical files in which one or more of the Murdaugh family members appear: Distilling, Illicit; Murdaugh Family; Murders - Murdaugh Family (2021). These are intended to give customers a general time frame for a particular Murdaugh family member or Murdaugh related event as a guide to start looking for additional resources elsewhere. 

Medicine, Science & Making Race in Civil War America by Leslie A. Schwalm (2023) provides compelling evidence that the construction of racism within the medical and health care systems before, during and after the Civil War was intentional. White Northerners, the Sanitary Commission, and the United States Army's medical personnel promoted ideas about Black inferiority, often mistreated their ailments, and conducted experiments on living humans. It is a damning indictment. Because Beaufort was a Union hospital town, we have a number of Civil War medical histories in the Research Room. We also have the author's A Hard Fight for We: Women's Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina (1997). 

Slavery's Exiles: The Story of the American Maroons by Syvliane A Diouf (2014) got cited so often in other books and articles about formerly enslaved African and African Americans who "freed" themselves and formed societies in Southern wild places, such as the swamps of Beaufort District, that I had to buy a copy for permanent retention. It joins Timothy Lockley's Maroon Communities in South Carolina: A Documentary Record (2009) on the BDC's shelves. 

We also received some more posters from the Beaufort Branch's bulletin boards of local events.