New (and New-to-Us) Materials in the Research Room, 15 February - June 30, 2024

Since mid-February we've added some items to the Research Room that you might find useful. Many were acquired as gifts from the Friends of the Beaufort Library. (I do so appreciate that I get first refusal of the local history related materials donated to them.) Honestly, I was a little surprised by just how many materials we've recently added to the library stacks in our Research Room - particularly since we don't put some formats and try to minimize the number of boring covers on display. (This is where our in-house spreadsheet of orders, gifts, archival donations, etc. comes in handy.) 

Shelf 1 contains a 1949 edition of the classic tourism brochure, Beaufort County South Carolina: Its Shrines and Early History by N.L. Willett. W.S. We have a number of editions of this railroad related document advertising commercial and tourist spots in and around the County Beaufort County. 

The BDC has always collected locally produced cookbooks. We've added Islanders Cook for Company (1986) by the Women of St. Andrew By-the-Sea United Methodist Church on Hilton Head Island. 

Shelf 2 contains two items about a local historic site: Fort Frederick : A SCDNR Heritage Preserve and the World It Changed by Reece Spradely (2023) [download your own copy ] and a bilingual coloring book for children, Archaeology from A to Z = Arqueologia de la A a la Z [download your own copy].  BTW: The BDC is sponsoring a field trip to Fort Frederick on July 29th in case you're interested in meeting us at the historic site. 

In the middle of shelf 2 are copies of the WHHR Hilton Head Island Almanacs from 1981-1983. Think of these as a Poor Richard's Almanack for the late 20th century in hopes of luring tourists and new residents with a compendium of useful facts (weather, historical facts and sites, emergency services, entertainment opportunities, local businesses etc.) about Hilton Head Island. It's a little devoid of witty aphorisms.  

Shelf 3 has more tourism related ephemera: a Hilton Head Island Vacation Directory from 2008 and a Vacation Hilton Head Island (Property of the Hotel) hardbound book that obviously wasn't left in that hotel room as instructed. The facsimile lighthouse at Harbour Town features prominently. 

Up Here is a beautifully illustrated and well researched history about a real lighthouse, in this case the Hunting Island Lighthouse, and the people who kept the light on in the darkness (mostly) from 1859 until it was decommissioned in 1933. Hunting Island Lighthouse is a beloved local historic site. BTW: Authors Ted Panayotoff and Linda Miller will be sharing some of that history in a BDC local history program at Hilton Head Branch Library on Tuesday, August 6th. 

Shelf 4 contains Penn Center's 1862 Circle Gala program of 2012 that inducted an institution, Brick Baptist Church, and a person, Herman Gaither, into the Circle during its celebration of "150 years of education, leadership and service." This program has joined a lot of other materials we have in the Research Room about the Penn School and later Penn Community Services and even more recently as Penn  Center.

Incidents in the Life of Cecilia Lawton: A Memoir of Plantation Life, War and Reconstruction in Georgia and South Carolina edited by Karen Stokes (2021) includes graphic descriptions of her memories of the devastation caused by Gen. Sherman's march through southern Georgia and across Beaufort District. In September 1864 she married the 5th man who offered, Winborn Wallace Lawton who at age 28 was 11 years her senior, a plantation owner, and a Confederate soldier. Occasionally she quotes diary entries she made in the memoir. This volume is important because it is written from a Southern white woman's perspective during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods. BTW: I'll probably use a quote from it as part of the introductory remarks I make at Ben Parten's presentation about Sherman's March through Beaufort District in December as part of the "Historically Speaking" series. 

Related materials that we already have about the Lawton family include Sea Island Yankee (1986) and How Grand a Flame: A Chronicle of a Plantation Family, 1813-1947 (1992) by Clyde Bresee both of which get unfavorable reviews by preface writer, James Everett Kibler, Jr.; Kith and Kin : A Portrait of a Southern Family (1630-1934) by Carolyn L. Harrell (1984); Our Family Circle by Annie Elizabeth Miller (1987; 1931); The Peeples Chronicles by Robert E.H. Peeples (2014); and Upper St. Peter’s Parish and Environs: A Collection of Writings by Thomas O. Lawton (2001).

With the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution almost upon us, I accepted Francis Marion and the Snow's Island Community to shore up our Revolutionary War holdings. Snow's Island is not in Beaufort District but Francis Marion is a very important South Carolina Patriot who commanded a small guerilla force that harassed British Colonel Banastre Tarleton's Dragoons. Tarleton is purportedly the person who game Marion the nickname "Swamp Fox." Other materials we have in our Research Room about Marion are the classic Swamp Fox: The Life and Campaigns of General Francis Marion by Robert D. Bass (1959, 1972) and An Annotated Bibliography of Works about General Francis Marion: Contained in the Arundel Room, Special Collections by M. Suzanne Singleton (2000). 

Shelf 5 houses just some of our usual take-aways we share with Research Room customers. 

Shelf 6 contains a new-to-us edition of The Black Border: Gullah Stories of the Carolina Coast (with a Glossary) by Ambrose E. Gonzales, 1922; reprint 1964.

The Return of Lafayette, 1824-1825 by Marian Klamkin (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975) has a boring blue cover which I improved by temporarily attaching an image of him to it.  As an aside: We're excited to participate in Historic Beaufort Foundation's upcoming 200th anniversary commemoration of Lafayette's visit to Beaufort during March 2025 - but more about those festivities will be announced later. You can read a bit more about Lafayette's 1825 visit to Beaufort in another Connections blog post.

Cubans in the Confederacy edited by Phillip Thomas Tucker (2002) features Ambrosio Jose Gonzales. Ambrosio José Gonzales established family ties to the area through marriage to Harriet Elliott of Beaufort, a daughter of planter, lawyer, and politician William Elliott, III. They were parents to Ambrose mentioned above. Ambrosio Gonzales was a conspirator for Cuban independence from Spain both before and after he joined the Confederate Artillery during the Civil War. Cuban Confederate Colonel by Antoino Rafael de la Cova (2003) recounts Gonzales's military and family history. 

Though not shown in the photos, we also added: 

• Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War by Edda Fields-Black (2024).
• A suede special edition of William Hilton's A Relation of a Discovery lately made on the coast of Florida (1963).
• Journal of the Grand Council of South Carolina, vol. 1: 25 August 1671 - 24 June 1680; vol. 2: 11 April 1692 - 26 September 1692.
• [In case you're wondering what the Grand Council was, here's what the South Carolina Encyclopedia says about it:

In the earliest years of South Carolina, the Lords Proprietors exercised lawmaking and taxing powers granted them by the king of England to establish a New World colony. The proprietors lived in England, so they selected a governor and, along with major resident landowners, a Grand Council to conduct the affairs of the colony. The proprietors retained veto authority over any Grand Council action. The Grand Council consisted of three groups: representatives of the proprietors, ten colonists chosen by leading landowners to act as a kind of upper legislative house, and a lower or Commons House of Assembly, which consisted of twenty members chosen by the “freemen” of the colony. The Commons House could only discuss proposals from other parts of the Grand Council. After 1682, however, all three groups had to approve any act, thus letting the Commons House exercise legislative initiative. This arrangement stayed intact until the proprietors were overthrown early in the eighteenth century by the general dissatisfaction of the Commons House, which was irked that their legislative initiatives were consistently vetoed by the proprietors.]

• A small booklet The Heyward Washington House: Historic House Branch of the Charleston Museum (1949) 
• The Lowcountry: America's Beginning - Trailer [DVD], 2008 (10 minutes) featuring Dr. Lawrence Rowland, Dr. Stephen Wise, and Emory Campbell
• Beaufort Symphony Orchestra (2023 - 2024) [posters]
• Building Now: Upon this Rock [DVD], [2005?], St. Peter's Catholic Church
• Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science that Changed the Course of World War II by Jennet Conant (2002)
• The Red Starfish: Cat Gabbiano Mystery Series Book 1 by Donna Keel Armer (2023)
• Lieutenant General Richard Heron Anderson: Lee's Noble Soldier by Joseph Cantey Elliott (1985)
• "North and South Carolina" with inset "Plan of Charleston" [Map]
• Death Notices in The South Carolina Gazette, 1732-1775 by A.S. Salley and Mabel L. Webber (1954)
• Marriage Notices in Charleston Courier, 1803 - 1808 by A.S. Salley, Jr. (1919)
• Marriage Notices in The South-Carolina and American General Gazette From May 30, 1766 to February 28, 1781... by A.S. Salley, Jr. (1914)
• Recollections of Juliana by Clare I. MacDonald (1924)
• South Carolina Folk Tales Stories of Animals and Supernatural Beings (1941)
• Heritage at Risk Survey and Interviews (2024) [poster]
• Low Country Chorale (2024) [poster]
• International Folk Dance Ensemble with Mountain Strings Presents Journey Reflections [from Brigham Young University] (2024) [poster]
• Beaufort County Library Presents Summer Reading (2024) [poster]
• Port Royal Sound and inland passages : United States--East Coast, South Carolina / United States (1974) [Map]
• "Going Wild in the Lowcountry" Beaufort Art Association (2024) [poster] 
• "March Forth..." Pat Conroy Literary Center (2024) [poster]
• "Beaufort's Human Library" Pat Conroy Literary Center (2024) [poster]

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We also added plenty of vertical file materials and a few archival materials that you'll read about when they get processed.