Primary Sources: South Carolina Local History

The South Carolina State Library Digital Collections includes both current and historical state documents. The South Carolina Tombstone Project is a collaboration between the State Library and partner public libraries in the state to provide images and transcriptions of tombstones in local cemeteries.

Provides free access to historic materials, such as photographs, images, manuscripts, journals, books, oral histories, objects, etc. illustrating the history and culture of South Carolina from over 40 cultural heritage institutions across the state.

Check out the history of each of South Carolina's counties, including the cities that make up those counties. Also find information about famous South Carolinians that lived in each county.

Sandlapper, the Magazine of South Carolina, established in 1968, promoted the state’s beauty, citizens, and history through the magazine. The final issue of the magazine was Winter 2011/Spring 2012. Sandlapper uses a variety of South Carolina photographers and writers to showcase the best of the state. Columns about restaurants, bed-and-breakfasts, and recipes are included with articles about towns, counties, history, and trends.

The Avery Research Center houses a variety of oral history interviews, largely documenting African American experiences in the Lowcountry. Oral history projects include the Avery Normal Institute documentation effort and the Sea Island Preservation Initiative.

A multiple-venue project, developed by a consortium of historical and educational institutions, that focuses on the participation of South Carolina during World War I and its effects on the state.

The series of photograph albums document the time that John Shaw Billings (1898-1975) and his extended family spent at the Redcliffe plantation in Aiken County, South Carolina.

This collection contains two volumes of local history and genealogical information regarding Fairfield County, South Carolina, including families who settled in the region, as well as related lines in Charleston, Orangeburg County, Richland County, and elsewhere in South Carolina.

The Fall Line is a geographic region within South Carolina where the rivers are no longer navigable from the Low Country. This area, which stretches from Cheraw on the Pee Dee River to Hamburg (present day North Augusta) on the Savannah River, yielded experiences and material culture that were characteristic of its peoples.

A collection of historical and contemporary images from the 1940s to the early 2000s.

The South Carolina State Library maintains an extensive print collection of materials published about South Carolina. Here we provide access to digitized copies of selected books in the public domain.

This collection includes correspondence, certificates, photographs, and other materials related to Miriam DeCosta Seabrook's education at Avery Institute and elsewhere, teaching career, and civic involvement; correspondence, speeches, and reports related to Dr. Herbert Seabrook, Sr.'s community and fraternal affiliations and to his medical career as a private practitioner and director of the Hospital and Training School for Nurses; and correspondence, memorabilia, and financial documents related to the marriage of Miriam and Herbert Seabrook.

The collection features 700 photographs showing the many features of the Gardens, as well as many of the residents of the Murrells Inlet area, including over seventy taken by North Carolina photographer, Bayard Wootten.

Hensel opened a photography business in which he extensively photographed children for grade school pictures and many historic people and places throughout the city. This collection contains a series of his photographs from 1949 to 1951.

Provides the opportunity to explore the unique and diverse history of the people and places that shaped Georgetown County.

The 106 slides of late 19th and early 20th century Florence were collected by Dr. G. Wayne King (1939-2008), a professor of history, who retired from Francis Marion University. The majority of the slides depict street scenes and buildings of downtown Florence, South Carolina.

Chesterfield County Library digitized several historical documents from their library including photographs of buildings in Cheraw such as Brown's Gift Show and the Stricklin Building.

Dedicated to records that document the family and cultural heritage of African Americans in the historic rice-growing areas of South Carolina, Georgia and extreme northeastern Florida.

The Lowcountry Digital Library produces digital collections and projects that strengthen the College of Charleston's instructional programs and support research about the region.

George W. Johnson took photographs of Charleston buildings and people at the turn of the 20th century.

An an online exploration of Charleston's remarkable heritage.

By Hubert Inman Hester, published in 1969

The 19th Century Documents collection will include accurate transcriptions of many important and representative primary texts from 19th century American history.

This collection of postcards highlights historic churches, schools, libraries and monuments, among other places of note in South Carolina.

This collection contains documents, postcards, and photographs from the Greenville Woman's College of Greenville, South Carolina.

Images of Harvey Gantt entering Clemson College as the first African American student in 1963.

This collection includes A Story of Spartan Push: The Greatest Cotton Manufacturing Centre in the South: Spartanburg, South Carolina, and Its Resources by Edward P. McKissick and Spartanburg, City and County, South Carolina: Their Wonderful Attractions and Marvelous Advantages as a Place of Settlement, and for the Profitable Investment of Capital by the Spartanburg Board of Trade.

The Cleveland L. Sellers, Jr. Papers is comprised of papers relating to the Orangeburg Massacre, February 5-8, 1968. Included in the collection is a poem, a collection of Western Union telegrams, press releases, a fact sheet created by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, flyers, photographs, and a resolution from the Student Legislative Council of the University of California at Los Angeles demanding that the perpetrators of the violence that took place at Orangeburg be brought to justice.

The journal covers Tennent's trek though the S.C. back-country, at times in the company of William Henry Drayton and Rev. Oliver Hart in an effort to persuade Loyalist Tories to join the Patriot cause.

The collection contains, primarily, the correspondence of Isaiah Bennett, President of the Charleston Chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute. Isaiah Bennett (1926-2002) served as a union representative for tobacco workers at the American Tobacco Company's "Cigar Factory" and as a leader and negotiator of the Charleston Hospital Workers' Strike of 1969. Bennett also founded and was president of the Charleston chapter of the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, an umbrella organization for black trade unions.

The papers of colonial governor James Glen (1701-1777), who served as Governor of South Carolina from 1738 to 1756, include official government documents, papers concerning relations with Native American Indians, business papers relating to his ownership of a South Carolina rice plantation, and correspondence between Glen and South Carolina planter, John Drayton (1713-1779).

Chesterfield County Library has digitized a collection of family papers from the Spencer Family circa 1780s-1910s.

The African-American experience in slavery and freedom as told through documents held in Wofford College’s Special Colelctions. Drawing upon materials from the library’s Special Collections, including the Littlejohn Collection, and the Wofford and SC Methodist Archives, this exhibition traces the African-American experience from the American Revolution to the early modern era, particularly in the South and Upstate.

6 images. This collection includes mainly photocopies of manuscript collections which Dr. Shankman has used for his research and writing. Included are pamphlets, biographical sketches, correspondence, and newspaper accounts. Most of the collection relates to the Civil War, particularly in Illinois, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, but there is material relating to Jews, Blacks, and U.S. foreign relations.

Papers of Bonds Conway (1763-1843), a free African-American resident of Camden (Kershaw County, S.C.). This collection of family letters, land papers, and other items documents several generations of a free family of color from the 18th through the 20th centuries in South Carolina, Georgia, Kansas, east Texas, and elsewhere. Topics discussed include social relations during antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction eras through the early 20th century.

Forty-four letters, 1862-1863, of Union soldier Calvin Shedd, Co. A, Seventh New Hampshire Regiment, are written primarily from locations in coastal South Carolina and addressed to his wife, S. Augusta Shedd, at Enfield, N.H., and South Reading, Mass.

The papers of the Rev. Charles Stuart Vedder (1826–1917) consist primarily of letters as well as diaries spanning a period of over sixty years. Vedder moved from Schenectady, New York, to Columbia, South Carolina, to study at Columbia Theological Seminary. Of particular historical interest are Vedder’s three diaries from 1861 to 1866, in which the Civil War is woven into Vedder’s discussions of social life and religion.

These images are from the Charleston Museum's collection of civil war photographs and are primarily stereographs.

The Charleston Museum Plantation Photographs collection is comprised of black and white photos of Charleston County plantations, plantation ruins, and their grounds.

As a Southern military college, The Citadel and its cadets were integrally involved in the events of the American Civil War. This collection includes first-person accounts of the Civil War period, in addition to a signed copy of the U.S. War Department orders to raise the flag at Fort Sumter at the conclusion of the War.

The Neves family of the Mush Creek Community in Greenville District sent three sons to fight in the Civil War, William (W.P.Z.F), John (J.P.), and George (G.W.) Neves, as well as a son-in-law, Andrew Waldrop. Some of the letters in this collection were written by these young men and describe life in camp, but the majority were written to the soldiers by their parents, siblings, and other family members. These letters include mentions of weather, farming, local events such as deaths and marriages, and other details of everyday life in the upper part of Greenville County during the war. These letters are from the private collection of a descendant of the Neves family who resides in Greenville County.

A selection of lithographs featuring Columbia, South Carolina during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, including the Wade Hampton mansion and gardens, Columbia after Sherman’s march, and images of the State House and grounds.

This collection contains manuscripts in the Littlejohn Collection that were created between April 1861 and April 1865

This collection contains the mementos Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Franklin Eshleman, a former commander of the Washington Artillery battalion, saved in his scrapbook. It portrays a civil war colonel's dedication to preserving the memory of his unit along with a larger more important purpose of memorializing the era of the confederate soldier. The scrapbook and papers were handed down the familial line from Eshleman to his daughter and eventually given to the University of South Carolina Beaufort (USCB) by the generous donation of Jack and Mindy Castles.

Esau Jenkins (1910-1972) was born and raised on Johns Island, South Carolina. With very little formal education, he became a businessman and civil rights leader. Jenkins founded the Progressive Club in 1948, which encouraged local African Americans to register to vote, through the aid of Citizenship Schools, a topic he was educated in by his attendance at Highlander Folk Center in Tennessee. In 1959, he organized the Citizens' Committee of Charleston County dedicated to the economic, cultural and political improvement of local African Americans. Printed material, correspondence, and literary productions (1963-2003) document the life and works of Esau Jenkins (1910-1972).

This Civil War-era photograph album contains cartes-de-visite photographs of members of the S. C. Secession Convention, Confederate and U.S. Governments, officers of the Confederate and U.S. Armies, S.C. governors, and officers of the South Carolina Volunteers 1st Regiment of Rifles. It also includes unidentified Heyward family and friends and 19th century pictures. Many photographs were taken by Quinby & Co. of Charleston, S.C. This album was donated to the South Caroliniana Library by Katherine Bayard Heyward and Duncan Heyward.

The collection consists of business correspondence, plantation records, slave lists, military documents, accounting records, legal documents and Civil War letters of the Heyward and Ferguson families of the Combahee, Savannah, and Cooper Rivers in the Low Country near Charleston, South Carolina. The letters date between 1806 and 1923, but the bulk of the correspondence is from the antebellum period. Much of the collection is family correspondence between Nathaniel Heyward (1766-1851), his wife Henrietta Manigault Heyward (1769-1827), their sons Nathaniel Heyward (1790-1819) and William Manigault Heyward (1789-1820), and their grandsons James Barnwell Heyward (1817-1886), Nathaniel Barnwell Heyward (1816-1891) and William Henry Heyward (1817-1889)

This disbound scrapbook contains legal documents, personal and business correspondence, receipts, ephemera, clippings and photographs pertaining to the Holloway family, a prominent free family of color in Charleston, SC. Legal documents include deeds, conveyances, slave bills of sale, contracts and a photograph of a 1797 document declaring patriarch Richard Holliday (Holloway) a free mulatto. Personal and business correspondence include letters concerning the hiring out of slaves, an offer to buy Holloway Negroes, a letter from Samuel Benedict about emigrating to Liberia, and information about the Brown Fellowship Society, the Century Fellowship Society, the Minors Moralist Society and the Bonneau Literary Society.

This Civil War memoir and regimental history written prior to 1870 by James R. Hagood reviews his service as one of the youngest colonels in the Army of the Confederate States of America in Maryland, Tennessee, Virginia, and South Carolina. Hagood's relatives, chiefly his nephew, Johnson Hagood 1873-1948, edited and reworked this memoir, ca. 1928 and 1944. He was born in Barnwell, S. C. , the son of Dr. James O'Hear Hagood and Indiana M. Allen Hagood. In 1862 he and a group of Citadel cadets formed themselves into a company of cavalry called the Cadet Rangers, which afterwards became Troop F, 6th South Carolina Cavalry. Hagood later transferred into the 1st South Carolina Regiment of Volunteer Infantry.

John A. Henneman mailed this letter from Spartanburg to his cousin Balser Weber in Centre County, Pennsylvania on February 26, 1861. He was expecting that Fort Sumter would soon be bombarded. Henneman served in the Civil War as second lieutenant in Co. E, Holcombe Legion. He was the owner of a jewelry store in Spartanburg after the war. In 1889 Henneman became mayor of Spartanburg. He was later killed in a domestic dispute when summoning a policeman.

From the Catholic Diocese of Charleston Archives comes this collection of correspondence to Bishop Patrick N. Lynch, Bishop of Charleston from 1858-1882. Spanning the years 1858-1866, theses letters to the Bishop from his family touch on a variety of topics including Catholicism and convent life, the Civil War and slavery, and Southern life in the mid-19th century.

This book describes the history of Bamberg, South Carolina, with maps, photographs, and text regarding the antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction eras.

This collection details the inner workings of Newton Plantation in the 1800s and contains several account and transaction ledgers. Specifically, this collection includes several day books (Newton Day Book or Newton Plantation Day Book), originating between 1854-1872, which hold detailed records of monetary transactions on the plantation including accounts payable and accounts receivable. Also in this collection is the Newton Slave List, 1828 which records names of slaves and their respective occupations on the plantation that year. Additionally the collection includes Newton Plantation Cash Books from 1869-1873, a Stock Keepers and Watchmen book from 1862 and an 1849 Sugar Book which contains records of sugar, rum and molasses production on the plantation.

This collection from the South Caroliniana Library consists primarily of the Civil War letters of Edward Laight Wells, discussing the mood in Charleston during the secession crisis in 1860, fighting with the Hampton's Legion 1864-1865, and the immediate aftermath of the war. Other letters are from Eliza Carolina Middleton Huger Smith discussing the health and welfare of her family during the war. Also included are quotations, autographs, Confederate notes, poetry, recipes, genealogical information and newspaper clippings.

The short publications in this collection were selected from the South Carolina Room’s extensive collection of pamphlets and fliers. They offer a variety of perspectives on the Civil War in South Carolina, from the political and social conditions that led up to secession, to the experiences of soldiers fighting the war, to the war’s aftermath and the era of Reconstruction. These pamphlets are held in the archive of the Greenville County Library System’s South Carolina Room.

From the University of South Carolina-South Caroliniana Library, a collection of photographs, manuscripts, books, and maps from the Civil War era.

In 1873, the University of South Carolina became the only state-supported Southern university to fully integrate during the Reconstruction Era that followed the Civil War. By 1876, the student body was predominately African-American. After Wade Hampton was elected governor and whites regained control of state government, the University was closed for reorganization in 1877, and reopened in 1880 as an all-white institution. It would remain all-white until desegregation in 1963. This collection brings together the surviving records from the Reconstruction University, including scholarship lists, room and board lists, and faculty correspondence. Student exams from the time period are included in another digital collection, University of South Carolina Student Exams, 1854-1917. Bringing these materials together online provides a glimpse into the lives of these pioneering African-American students.