Historically Speaking 5.3: Sea Island Cotton and Tom Austin

The "Historically Speaking" series returns on January 18, 2024 with a lecture about one of agricultural products that brought early 19th century prosperity to this area.

Akin to vegetarian silk Sea Island Cotton commanded a price over twice as high as the coarser "short staple cotton" grown inland.  In tandem with Carolina Gold Rice, Sea Island Cotton made pre-Civil War Beaufort the "Newport of the South", but its unique features demanded enslaved labor for its tending.  Thought to be extinct, Tom Austin tells the story of this crop and his ongoing project to preserve a small patch for Low Country posterity.

Tom Austin is a professional conservationist working as the Edisto Island Open Land Trust's (EIOLT) Land Protection Specialist, an independent researcher, and an avid naturalist from the ACE Basin of South Carolina. Through EIOLT's Hutchinson House project on Edisto Island, a reconstruction era freedman home which is being restored and developed into a public greenspace, Tom has found himself amidst an effort to study, interpret, and re-introduce one of the State's most influential cash crops, Sea Island Cotton.

This lecture is brought to you by the Beaufort County Historical Society and the Beaufort District Collection. We hope that you can join us! Registration is open until capacity is reached:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tom-austin-lazarus-the-resurrection-of-sea-island-cotton-from-extinction-tickets-792647368617?aff=oddtdtcreator. 

Just a reminder: The Library system will be closed on Monday, January 15, 2024 for Martin Luther King, Jr. day.