Time Period: Turn of the Century (1890 - 1913)

Minutes of City Council, City of Columbia, S.C.

The historical minutes of Columbia’s City Council, spanning January 1883 to December 1907. Through the efforts of volunteers at Richland Library’s Walker Local History Center the handwritten entries are in the process of being transcribed to allow for full-text searching. Please check back frequently as we are constantly adding to this collection.


Quick Access:
View Partner Collection Homepage / View in Discovery

Waring Historical Library Medical Caricatures

A collection of colorful illustrations satirizing both doctor and patient, illness and treatment. Notable artists represented in the collection include Louis Crusius, M.D., James Gillray, and Louis Boilly.


Quick Access:
View Partner Collection Homepage / View in Discovery

Phosphate, Farms, & Family: The Donner Collection

This collection of 548 photographs comes from two albums of family photographs created by Conrad Munro Donner (1844 – 1916), a peripatetic engineer from the Hamburg-Altona area near the border between Denmark and Germany who had an active interest in photography. Self-taught, the bulk of his images reflect his experience of Low Country rural life …


Quick Access:
View Partner Collection Homepage / View in Discovery

Pawley’s Island Civil Association Collection

The Pawleys Island Civic Association Collection features many of the historic photographs from Pawleys Island: A Century of History and Photographs. First settled by rice planters who looked for an escape from the deadly malaria that plagued the inland areas, the island continues to bring in both returning vacationers as well as first-timers who long to …


Quick Access:
View Partner Collection Homepage / View in Discovery

Papers of the Smith and Wells Families, 1856-1914

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 …


Quick Access:
View Partner Collection Homepage / View in Discovery

One Man’s Dream – William Plumer Jacobs and Clinton, South Carolina

In 1864, a 22-year-old seminary graduate named William Plumer Jacobs arrived in the small town of Clinton to become pastor of the Clinton Presbyterian Church (now the First Presbyterian Church, Clinton). Before his death in 1917, he was to transform the town. Wishing to make Clinton the Presbyterian center of the South, he was instrumental …


Quick Access:
View Partner Collection Homepage / View in Discovery

MUSC College of Nursing Class Photos

Class composites and group photos of graduates of the MUSC College of Nursing.


Quick Access:
View Partner Collection Homepage / View in Discovery

Morgan-Trenholm Collection

The Morgan-Trenholm Collection combines the collections of William D. Morgan (1853-1938) and Alfred Glover Trenholm (1874-1952). The photographs document life in Georgetown County in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of the photographs in the collection come from local photographers, including D.C. Simpkins, W.P. Dowling, James H. Winburn and William A. Reckling. Alfred …


Quick Access:
View Partner Collection Homepage / View in Discovery

Robert B. Ariail Collection of Historical Astronomy

In 2011 Robert B. Ariail donated an extraordinary collection of historical astronomy to the University of South Carolina and the South Carolina State Museum. Over the past half-century, Mr. Ariail built a collection that encompassed both historic telescopes and astronomical instruments, now at the State Museum, and more than 5,000 rare books and other published …


Quick Access:
View Partner Collection Homepage / View in Discovery

Reminiscences of the Sixties

Charles Crosland (1845-1918), who served in the 19th South Carolina Cavalry Battalion, with Company H of the Confederate Army’s Hampton Legion, recounts his combat experiences, his father’s death, and the destruction of the Crosland family plantation in Bennetsville. He also references the sinking of the USS Housatonic by the Confederate submarine, the H.L. Hunley. Lula …


Quick Access:
View Partner Collection Homepage / View in Discovery