BDC Reaches Out with Program and Events

We are getting off to a slower start than usual in 2019. Not to worry, though, because we have 3 community outreach events and 2 library based programs between January 31 and February 28 for you to attend. Some are free while some require advance registration and payment of a fee to our partners. We cover onomatology, African American history, genealogy, archaeology and lots of disasters in these offerings:

Correct Mispronunciations of Some South Carolina Names with Grace Cordial | Thurs., January 31, 2019 | BDC@ Coastal Discovery Museum, 70 Honey Horn Drive, Hilton Head Island | 3 PM | $ Registration and fee required by CDM https://www.coastaldiscovery.org/event-registration/?ee=12625 The session will be closed when capacity is reached.

Freedmen's Bureau Records with Toni Carrier, Executive Director, Center for Family History, International African American Museum | Sat., February 2, 2019 | BDC@ St. Helena Branch Library, 6355 Jonathan Francis Senior Road | 1 PM - 3 PM. To register for the workshop: https://www.gullahgeecheecorridor.org/calendar/ or telephone: (843) 818-4587 email: info@gullahgeecheecorridor.org


In 2019, BCHS and BHM are celebrating 80 years of preserving history in Beaufort County. The lecture will be held in the Tabernacle Baptist Church with a reception and book sale in the Tabernacle Baptist Church Fellowship Hall. The Beaufort District Collection will project a slideshow of items from its holdings about William J Whipper, Jonathan Jasper Wright, the Beaufort County Historical Society and the Beaufort Museum during the reception. 

Professor Burke

 
W. J. Whipper and J. J. Wright: Beaufort's and South Carolina's First Civil Rights Lawyers presented by Prof. W. Lewis Burke in cooperation with the Beaufort County Historical Society, Beaufort History Museum & Tabernacle Baptist Church | Thurs., February 7, 2019 | BDC@ Tabernacle Baptist Church, 901 Craven Street, Beaufort | 6:00 - 7:30 PM | $ Registration is required: https://beauforthistorymuseum.wildapricot.org/event-3119022



Shell Middens of the Lowcountry with Jeff Sherard, Archaeologist, Brockington & Associates | Wed., February 20, 2019 | BDC@ Beaufort Branch Library, First Floor, 311 Scott Street | 2 PM
First come; first seated; No registration

Hurricanes in Beaufort District's Past with Grace Cordial | Wed., February 27, 2019 | BDC@ Palmetto Bluff Conservancy Classroom, 659 Old Moreland Road, Bluffton | Noon to 1 PM
Free and open to the general public

The Library system will be closed on Monday, January 21, 2019 to observe Martin Luther King, Jr. day. Regular hours will resume on Tuesday, January 22, 2019.

Reconstruction Era Panel Exhibit Now on Display

Our colleagues over at the USC-Beaufort Libraries put together a small panel exhibit (using some of our images) for the NEH's Institute for Teachers on America's Reconstruction | The Untold Story mentioned last month here in Connections. The exhibit is aptly entitled "Reconstruction History Long Ignored, Neglected: Are We Finally Ready to Talk?" As you may recall, we posted lots of links and images from our holdings on the topic of Reconstruction to support the Institute.
 

Geni Flowers, interim Library Director for the USC-B Libraries, was kind to allow us to borrow the exhibit and place it on display just outside our Research Room doors. Do drop by and enjoy it, Mondays through Fridays, 10 am to 5 pm.
 

The final projects including lesson plans created by the teachers should be available soon on the Institute's website.  

Freedman's Bank

Few people know that the Freedman's Bank was the first local financial institution in Beaufort District. Yes, that's right: Beaufort District did not have any local financial institution before Gen. Rufus Saxton (U.S.) advocated a bank for the newly freed slaves to learn "habits of carefulness and prudence"during the Civil War.

• You can peruse the online version of "New South Newspaper," a part of the University of South Carolina's Digital Collections, to read more about Gen. Rufus Saxton's efforts to get a branch of the Freedman's Bank in Beaufort.
• We also hold the New South, Free South, and Palmetto Herald on microfilm at Beaufort Branch and Hilton Head Island Branch libraries for the customer who loves reading old newspapers. [It can take awhile, but oh, it is ever so much fun!]

You can read plenty about the Reconstruction era financial difficulties in "Bankless in Beaufort: A Reexamination of the 1873 Failure of the Freedman's Savings Branch at Beaufort, South Carolina," by John Martin Davis, Jr. in the South Carolina Historical Magazine, vol. 104, January 2003, pp. 25-55. The author is both an attorney as well as an accountant so his skill sets afford penetrating insight into what really happened to the bank.

• You can find the South Carolina Historical Magazine in the Beaufort District Collection and at our Hilton Head Island Branch Library.
• When the Freedman's Bank failed, it left behind some crucial records for anyone doing African-American family research. Although the extent of the information can vary widely, it is one of the best sources of genealogical information to get you ever closer to that key 1870 Census.
• You can search Freedman's Bank records on the Family Search website. 
•  Ancestry Library Edition numbers the United States, Freedmen's Bureau of Field Offices, 1863-1878 records among its more than 10,000+. The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, also known as the Freedman’s Bureau, was established in the War Department by an act of Congress on March 3, 1865. The Bureau was responsible for the supervision and management of all matters relating to refugees and freedmen, and of lands abandoned or seized during the Civil War. 
• Check out our Reconstruction webpage to gain a better understanding of the fascinating complexity of the Reconstruction era and its enduring impact on the people and institutions of the United States.

Every Hero Has a Story: Susie King Taylor

This year the theme for the Library system's Summer Reading programs is "Every Hero Has a Story." Our Youth Services personnel are emphasizing superheroes and everyday heroes in our community (fire fighters, police, emergency response personnel, etc.) through programs and fun events. (Calendar).  Because our responsibility is local history, I am going to highlight just a few of the historical everyday heroes in Beaufort District's past in posts here through July 17th.

An unsung heroine who confronted the injustice surrounding her was Susie King Taylor.  Taylor served the 33rd USCT [the United States Colored Troops within the Union Army raised locally] as a nurse and a teacher. She did so without payment. She taught and nursed here in Beaufort among the freedmen being treated in the Contraband hospitals.

She wrote this in Reminiscences of My Life in Camp with the 33d United States Colored Troops, Late 1st S. C. Volunteers:

"In this 'land of the free' we are burned, tortured, and denied a fair trial, murdered for any imaginary wrong conceived in the brain of the negro-hating white man. There is no redress for us from a government which promised to protect all under its flag. It seems a mystery to me. They say, 'One flag, one nation, one country indivisible.' Is this true? Can we say this truthfully, when one race is allowed to burn, hang, and inflict the most horrible torture weekly, monthly, on another? No, we cannot sing 'My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of Liberty'! It is hollow mockery. The Southland laws are all on the side of the white, and they do just as they like to the negro, whether in the right or not... I do not uphold my race when they do wrong. They ought to be punished, but the innocent are made to suffer as well as the guilty, and I hope the time will hasten when it will be stopped forever ... I hope the day is not far distant when the two races will reside in peace in the Southland, and we will sing with sincere and truthful hearts, 'My country, 'tis of thee, Sweet land of Liberty, of thee I sing.'"

You can read the electronic version of this memoir within the "Documenting the American South" website hosted by the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill by clicking on http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/taylorsu/taylorsu.html.

The BDC has printed copies of her memoirs in two forms:
SC 973.7 TAY Reminiscences of My Life in Camp, Arno Press and the New York Times, 1968
SC 973.7 TAY A Black Woman's Civil War Memoirs, edited by Patricia W. Romero with a new introduction by Willie Lee Rose, Markus Wiener Publishing, 1988.

If you want to introduce your children to important figures in Beaufort District History, we suggest The Diary of Susie King Taylor, Civil War Nurse. This is an abridged version of her memoirs edited and illustrated for children. You can find it in our children's biography sections at Beaufort Branch and Bluffton Branch libraries, call number: J B TAYLOR.