Local History Program: Loyalists of Beaufort District with Katie Epps

At 11:00 AM on March 26th at the Bluffton Branch Library, join us for Loyal to the End: The Loyalists (or Tories) of Beaufort District with Katie Epps.

In some ways, the American Revolution was Beaufort District's first civil war. Join Palmetto Bluff Archaeologist Katie Epps as she discusses the often-overlooked Loyalists of Beaufort District and their actions in the Revolutionary War.

Katie Epps fell in love with history while growing up in Charleston. She earned her undergraduate degree in Anthropology at the College of Charleston and her master's degree from the University of South Carolina. She worked at Palmetto Bluff as a contract archaeologist from 2004-2008 and returned in 2021 as the Assistant Archaeologist. She is now the Director of Cultural Resources and is responsible for the archaeological resources of Palmetto Bluff, conserving the metal artifacts, preparing artifacts for perpetual curation, and working with the Conservancy to ensure the cemeteries are maintained and restored.

The "Historically Speaking" local history series is brought to you by the Beaufort District Collection and the Beaufort County Historical Society.

Doors open at 10:30 AM.

Reminder: The Beaufort County Library will be closed April 3rd for Good Friday.

Local History Program: Reminiscences as Reclamations with Mollie Barnes

Join us for Reminiscences as Reclamations: Reading Susie King Taylor and Elizabeth Hyde Botume in Conversation, a local history program hosted by Dr. Mollie Barnes, on March 6th at 11:00 AM in the Beaufort Branch Library Meeting Room. 

Mollie Barnes is Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina Beaufort, Vice President of the Margaret Fuller Society, and Vice President of Organizational Matters for the Society for the Study of American Women Writers. She has published more than a dozen articles and book chapters on nineteenth-century women writers. Her book—Paper Heroines: Women Writers in Conversation and Community Across the Sea Islands, 1838–1902 (University of South Carolina Press, 2026)—studies the ways women documented their own and one another’s lives in diaries and biographies, focusing especially on the intersection of gender and race. The National Endowment for the Humanities supported this research with a 2023 Summer Stipend. She is completing two new books: Laura Matilda Towne, Abolitionist: Penn School Diaries, 1862–1864 and Ednah Dow Littlehale Cheney and Nineteenth-Century Women’s Lives: A Cultural Biography.

Dr. Barnes will present part of the coda of her new book, Paper Heroines (released February 5), where she studies Susie King Taylor’s Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33rd United States Colored Troops, Late 1st S.C. Volunteers (1902) and Elizabeth Hyde Botume’s First Days Amongst the Contrabands (1893) together, side-by-side. Through this diptych, she’ll demonstrate how and why we ought to read women relief workers—and their life writing—in conversation and in community with one another. When we do, we’re able to recover stories of Black women’s lives that have been overlooked or dismissed for too long.

The "Historically Speaking" local history series is brought to you by the Beaufort District Collection and the Beaufort County Historical Society.

Reminder: The Library system will be closed on Monday, February 16, 2026 in honor of Presidents Day. 

RESCHEDULED Local History Program: A Party Divided with Eric Ellis

The joint BDC & BCHS program, A Party Divided: Political Divisions of the Beaufort Republican Party During Reconstruction with NPS Historian Eric Ellis, has been postponed and rescheduled. 

Originally planned for later this month, the program will now be held on Thursday, May 14, 2026, at 11:00 AM in the Beaufort Branch Library Meeting Room. Please be sure to update your calendars.

Reminder: The Library system will be closed on Monday, February 16, 2026, in honor of Presidents Day.