School Annuals in the Research Room (latest update: 7 May 2025)

Last updated: 7 May 2025 - gmc

Questions about local school yearbooks come up on a very regular basis in the Research Room. 

Our collection of school yearbooks in the Beaufort District Collection comes from donations through time. That means that our coverage of schools is completely dependent on donations. I rejoice when someone calls to offer us school annuals (or Marine Platoon books) found while clearing out a property. As I often say and occasionally write, getting the opportunity of first refusal is the best gift of all.

The full list by school name in alphabetical order with the annual year is: 

Battery Creek High School: 1975, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1984, 1987, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2002

Beaufort Academy: 1966, 1967, 1968, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1978, 1979, 1982, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1998, 2002

Beaufort High School: 1921, 1923, 1937, 1938, 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, 1954, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1980,1981, 1982, 1983,1985, 1987, 1990, 1998, 2005, 2007

Beaufort Jasper Career Education Center: 1993

Beaufort Junior High School: 1963, 1965, 1969, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979

H.E. McCracken High School: 1973, 1975

H.E. McCracken Middle School: 2007

Hilton Head Island Middle School:  2004

Lady's Island Elementary School: 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002

Lady's Island Junior High School: 1985, 1986, 1987, 1991, 1992

Mather School: 1954, 1956, 1957

Praise Christian Academy: 1995

St. Helena High School: 1956

Robert Smalls High School: 1964, 1981, 1986, 1991, 1992

Robert Smalls Junior High School: 1989

As you can see, coverage is hit or miss. 

The Mather School, Robert Smalls High School and St. Helena High School were predominantly black schools.  

• Mather School was a private boarding school founded to educate African-American girls in the late 1860s by Rachel Mather. It began to admit males to its religious training classes in the mid-20th century. The Technical College of the Lowcountry campus on Ribaut Road in Beaufort occupies the former Mather School property.
• Robert Smalls High School used to sit on the County administration building property at the corner of Ribaut and Boundary Streets, 1924 -1970 for the High School. The Robert Smalls Junior High School adjacent to the RSHS continued to operate at the site until 1984 when the new Robert Smalls School was opened on what is now 43 W K Alston Dr, Beaufort, SC 29906; and
• St. Helena High School, open from 1954 to 1971, was on the site of the present St. Helena Elementary School.
  

In response to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, three Black students petitioned School District 1 Board of Trustees to transfer into white schools in July 1964. The first Black students to integrate the white schools in Beaufort County were Rowland Washington who attended Beaufort High; Craig Washington who transferred into Beaufort Elementary; and Janelle Drake who went to Mossy Oaks Elementary. When the schools opened in late August that year, nine Black students entered classrooms at formerly all-white schools. The Beaufort Gazette named the nine students as Ronald Washington [Rowland Washington], Reginald Butler Jr., Paula Butler, Craig Washington, Mae Cathlie, Banessa Newsome, Dwight Smith, Lucy Smith, and Jeannelle Drake. Five of the nine students were military dependents. At the time the article was written another ten Black students were awaiting finalization of their petitions for transfer into white schools. [Source: "Nine Negro Students Enter Four County White Schools," Beaufort Gazette, 3 September 1964, pp. A-1, A-3.] 

Gradually the integration process unfolded so that by the 1970-1971 school year, Robert Smalls High School, St. Helena High School and Beaufort High School merged into one high school for all north of the Broad high school students. Each school contributed some tradition to the new integrated high school entity: The school's name became Beaufort High School; the school colors became green and white (green from the green/gold of Robert Smalls, green/white of Beaufort High and red/white of St. Helena High), the athletic teams became Eagles (from St. Helena High).  [Source: Look Back 1965-1972: Civil Triumph: The Integration of Beaufort High School ... by Beaufort Middle School (2002), p. 23].

We have BDC vertical files on each of these schools and one on "Schools - Integration" more in the Research Room. You can borrow a copy of Look Back from one of the branch library local history section. 

You can see some school related postcards in the Russell J. Arnsberger Collection and some school related photographs in the Lucille Hasell Culp Collection through our partnership with the Lowcountry Digital Library.

A request: If you happen to have a yearbook from schools within Beaufort, Jasper or Hampton counties, South Carolina, I'd love to have the right of first refusal for the BDC. 

Every Hero Has a Story: Rachel C. Mather

[This entry was last updated 20 August 2021. - gmc]

An unsung heroine who confronted the suffering left in the wake of that "Tide of Death," the Great Sea Island Storm of 1893, was Rachel Crane Mather. 

Mather tapped into her religious, educational, and philanthropic circles writing letters to solicit donations to ease some of the hardships she saw around her. With those donations, she distributed food, clothing, and occasionally a few coins to the endless stream of sufferers arriving at the Mather School doors, a boarding school she had founded in 1867 with support from the American Missionary Association to educate formerly enslaved girls. According to The Reconstruction Era in Beaufort County Local Initiative for National Designation Report (2003), Mather School "actually served as more of a social agency that provided Biblical instruction and lessons in home economics" than as a general educational facility for African-American women. She felt deeply for the people she served.  From the start, she used her payment from teaching to buy food for the freedmen as "she could not 'send away these pitiful cadaverous looking people without giving them a few qts. or pints of grits.'" Her actions foreordained her reaction to the survivors of the hurricane.

Much of what we know of the personal tragedies caused by the hurricane comes from the accounts she published at a cost of $120 in 1894.  Storm Swept Coast is replete with personal accounts of what transpired during and in the immediate aftermath of the deadliest natural disaster in Beaufort District's long history. However, Palmetto Post newspaper editor Samuel H. Rodgers criticized the expense.

 

Yet Rodgers retracted his criticism in the next week's edition of the newspaper: "We did her an injustice with the lights now before us, and hasten to remedy the evil. The book is to be sold.” He goes on to say that “Miss Mather pays a tribute to the Red Cross which many think it in no way deserves.  Why, with an amount not over $10,000 Miss Mather did more real good work among the sufferers than the vaunted Red Cross with four times the amount." 

Read some contemporary newspaper accounts of her activities and see a list of materials that we have here in the Research Room about her life. 

That you can find a digital version of Storm Swept Coast and our small collection of hurricane of 1893 photographs online is due to our long partnership with the Lowcountry Digital Library. This way anyone with an internet connection anywhere in the world can learn about Mrs. Mather's role in helping alleviate the suffering caused by the most devastating natural disaster to ever befall this area.

Selected Materials about Penn Center

Penn Center has been celebrating its 150th Anniversary since 2012. Penn School was established in 1862 by two Northern missionaries, Laura M. Towne and Ellen Murray.  It was among the first American institutions to provide a formal education for formerly enslaved people. In 1901, the Penn School expanded to become the Penn Normal, Agricultural and Industrial School after adopting the industrial arts curriculum taught at Hampton and Tuskegee Institutes. Penn School closed in 1948. During the 1960s, Penn Community Services reinvigorated its involvement in the Civil Rights Movement as the only South Carolina location where interracial groups could meet and discuss civil disobedience activities in peace.  During the 1970s, Penn Community Services evolved into Penn Center, an organization dedicated “to promote and preserve the history and culture of the Sea Islands.” Check out the recently updated list of selected resources about Penn School, Beaufort County's own historic and hallowed institution.

Slavery at South Carolina College, 1801 - 1865 website

From the GLC Newsletter, March 19 e-newsletter (Gilder Lehrman Center): 

The Public History Program at the University of South Carolina welcomes comments on a new website, “Slavery at South Carolina College, 1801–1865: The Foundations of the University of South Carolina”: http://library.sc.edu/digital/slaveryscc/index.html.  While many American colleges and universities in recent years have been researching their historical connections to the institution of racial slavery, this website is the first public acknowledgement of the role of slaves and slavery at the antebellum college that became the University of South Carolina.  It was researched and created entirely by students, first in an undergraduate history course and then in a graduate public history seminar.  Comments may be left on the website or sent directly to Prof. Robert Weyeneth weyeneth@sc.edu

National Women's History Month

March is National Women's History Month.

Each year National Women's History Month employs a unifying theme and recognizes national honorees whose work and lives testify to that theme. The theme for 2012 is "Women's Education - Women's Empowerment." 

Among this year's National Women's History Project honorees is Charlotte Forten Grimke, who taught here in Beaufort County during the early days of the "Port Royal Experiment."  To honor her contribution to education, we have prepared an online list of our library's resources about her, her life, and her family.   


Image courtesy of the National Women's History Project.

Teachers and the "Port Royal Experiment"

Well meaning missionary teachers, white and black, male and female, journeyed to Port Royal (what the Union called all the area surrounding Port Royal Sound) to help the newly freed slaves learn to read and write.

The image above from our holdings shows a group of ten teachers (among them: Miner, Mrs. Harris, Armstrong, Cahoun, Colburn, H.C. Bullard, Mitchell, Jenners, King and Foote).

William Reed who donated these images to the Beaufort Township Library (our predecessor institution) wrote:

"Home for teachers of the Freedmen sent out by the American Missionary Assn of New York. Several very nice young ladies among them. Taken in February 1865. All but two of those in the picture taught in Savannah."

To learn more about the teachers and their tasks in educating the freed slaves, consult the selective guide to resources entitled "Missionary Teachers to the Freedmen" posted a few days ago under the "Local History Treasures Brought to You by the Beaufort District Collection."

School Archives

It seems to me that people get more interested in school once they are out of it!

It is fairly common to get asked about the types of materials we have on schools in Beaufort County. I wish I could write that all it would take to know the complete history of a current or former school was for you to come back and visit. Alas, that is not the case. The School Districts (and the plural "districts" is intentional since there has been more than one district at some points during Beaufort County's long history) have not been particularly good at documenting their activities through retention of historical records. Therefore, a researcher has to locate and use other types of materials to piece together a history of a particular school or a student and/or employee therein.

Here's the good news: The Beaufort District Collection has some Beaufort County School Board records on microfilm.

Here's the not so good news: Unfortunately, the records are not very exciting seeing as they are mostly financial in nature. Little mention is made of the history of individual schools. No mention is made of any students. You will not be able to find your grandmother's report card. For that type of information, researchers are forced to read through the newspaper back files in hopes of running across something about a particular school or an honor roll listing.

The one newspaper index we have -- and it's not all that good -- covers the period 1874 - 1936. Alas, it's not an index to every article written in the Palmetto Post and/or Beaufort Gazette during that time frame.

Here's somewhat better news: We cataloged the school annuals in the BDC during the relocation shutdown. Now you can find the ones we own listed in the SC LENDS catalog as a result of the hard work of the Technical Services department. We do not have every school, or every annual for any of the schools, but we probably have the largest collection of local school annuals in the area.

And, of course, there are some BDC vertical files on specific schools. You can find out what we have by searching the SC LENDS catalog.

Documents relating to school records are "historical records that help to convey a society’s culture from one generation to another. Such records serve as unique resources for historians and other specialists. Historical records also serve as the basis for personal research in areas like genealogy and the study of communities and groups, and they are often required for the preservation of historic buildings, historic sites, and museum exhibits."

StudySC website is a good place to start!

It's the start of a new school year, so today I want to highlight a relatively new, and continuously evolving, resource about history, culture, and the environment in South Carolina:

One aspect of information delivery that gets overlooked too often are librarian vetted websites such as StudySC. StudySC, created by the South Carolina State Library, makes available a student-friendly environment arranged by grade level and by subject area where students can find the information they need fast. StudySC provides online content to support South Carolina-specific curriculum standards. And it just keeps getting better!

K-12 students can use StudySC to:
* Discover websites from non-profits, educational sources, and government agencies on South Carolina topics
* Read articles from DISCUS databases and South Carolina periodicals
* View pictures, video, and artwork that represents South Carolina themes
* Explore primary documents from South Carolina history such as maps, photographs, and oral history

Educators can use StudySC to:
* Discover content from trusted websites on South Carolina themes for use in your classroom
* Explore multimedia content such as videos, audio, photographs, and maps to make your lesson plans memorable

Each grade level in StudySC now features a "History Before 1865" section that includes information for K-12 students on the history of South Carolina, from the first inhabitants through the Civil War. For example, explore the topic First South Carolinians - "Meet the Native Americans who first called South Carolina home." To review the section from an elementary school level, click here.

Other topics include Civil Rights, the antebellum economic system, and the age of discovery -- among others.

Just remember that one doesn't have to be a teacher or a K-12 student to learn more about the history of this state and its people. Libraries, and Beaufort County Library in particular, are all about offering residents and visitors opportunities for lifelong learning. A good way to participate in lifelong learning, is to to check out StudySC, regardless of your chronological age!

Mather School

Mather School was a private boarding school for African American girls founded by Rachel Mather in 1867. About a 100 years later, Mather School was sold to the State of South Carolina for educational purposes. The Technical College of the Lowcountry (TCL) now occupies the site.

Recently, TCL razed the Wildy Gymnasium, built on the Mather School Campus in 1961. As a highlight of the 32nd Annual Mather School reunion, the Wildy Memorial Garden is being dedicated Saturday, July 25th at 2pm.

Read about the educational goals of the Women's American Baptist Home Mission Society in a New York Times,newspaper article dated April 11, 1897.

A list of links and library materials about Rachel Mather are found in "Local Notables: Important People in the History of Beaufort County."