This collection of one hundred ten manuscripts, thirteen fully transcribed journals, and thirty-nine photographs, as well as his five Fungi Caroliniani Exsicatti Century books now available online, documents the family life, business pursuits, and natural history interests of South Carolina planter, botanist, and agricultural writer Henry William Ravenel (1814-1887). In addition, Ravenel’s plant specimens from …
This photograph collection is a small portion of USC Aiken’s historical Gregg-Graniteville Archive of documents and memorabilia of the Graniteville Company, a major Southern textile manufacturing firm founded in 1845 by William Gregg. The archive represents the only collection in existence devoted to William Gregg and the Graniteville Company. It was developed over the years …
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 …
The Historical Commission of South Carolina pamphlet collection is comprised of 45 artificially bound volumes of separately published South Carolina imprints from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Topics covered include: agriculture, Civil War regimental histories, education and schools, geology, industry, medicine, Native American tribes, nature, nullification, the Revolutionary War, the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877), and …
These forty South Carolina soil survey maps from the early Nineteen Hundreds were prepared with booklets to explain the soil classifications on the county level. They include information that do not appear on updated survey maps, such as old rail lines, schools, churches and other structures as well as entire towns that no longer exist.
A historical records survey known as the Inventory of Church Archives was completed by W.P.A. workers between 1937 and 1939. The original survey sheets are held in the Manuscripts Division of the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia. In 1980, the collection was microfilmed by the South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston, through a …
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. Known for his position as the first managing editor of Life Magazine, Billings purchased Redcliffe in 1935 from his uncle Henry Cumming Hammond (1868-1961) for $15,000. Even before …
The 1825 publication of Robert Mills’ Atlas of the State of South Carolina marked an American cartographic first. This volume is the first systematic atlas of any state in the union. Remarkably, too, no other state atlas of South Carolina was published for the next century and a half.
The Negro Travelers’ Green Book was a travel guide series published from 1936 to 1964 by Victor H. Green. It was intended to provide African American motorists and tourists with the information necessary to board, dine, and sightsee comfortably and safely during the era of segregation.
Originally conceived in the late 18th Century, fire insurance maps provided structural and urban environmental information necessary for insurance underwriters. Founded in 1867 in the United States, the Sanborn National Insurance Diagram Bureau systematically produced ascetically appealing, but also efficient, maps nationwide. This New York firm expanded and grew immensely, finally emerging as the Sanborn …