University of South Carolina Scholar Commons University South Caroliniana Society - Annual South Caroliniana Library Report of Gifts 4-6-2019 Caroliniana Society Annual Gifts Report - 2019 (370 pages) South Caroliniana Library--University of South Carolina Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/scs_anpgm Part of the Library and Information Science Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation University South Caroliniana Society. (2019). "2019 Caroliniana Society Annual Gifts Report." Columbia, SC: The ocS iety. This Newsletter is brought to you by the South Caroliniana Library at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in University South Caroliniana Society - Annual Report of Gifts yb an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 2019 Report of Gifts to the Library by Members of the Society Announced at the 83rd Meeting of the University South Caroliniana Society (Friends of the Library) Annual Program 6 April 2019 Chance Encounters: Serendipty and the Writings of Two Charlestonians at War -- 2018 Keynote Address by Dr. Barbara L. Bellows Gifts of Manuscript South Caroliniana Gifts of Printed South Caroliniana Gifts of Pictorial South Caroliniana Endowments and Funds to Benefit the Library Guardian Society and New Members South Caroliniana Library (Columbia, SC) A special collection documenting all periods of South Carolina history. http://library.sc.edu/socar University of South Carolina Contact – [email protected] PRESIDENTS THE UNIVERSITY SOUTH CAROLINIANA SOCIETY 1937–1943 .............................................................................M.L. Bonham 1944–1953 ................................................................... J. Heyward Gibbes 1954 ................................................................................ Samuel L. Prince 1954–1960 ........................................................ Caroline McKissick Belser 1960–1963 ................................................................. James H. Hammond 1963–1966 ................................................................. Robert H. Wienefeld 1966–1969 ....................................................................... Edwin H. Cooper 1969–1972 ..................................................................... Claude H. Neuffer 1972–1974 ..................................................................... Henry Savage, Jr. 1974–1978 ........................................................... William D. Workman, Jr. 1978–1981 .........................................................................Daniel W. Hollis 1981–1984 .......................................................................... Mary H. Taylor 1984–1987 .........................................................................Walter B. Edgar 1987–1990 ......................................................................... Flynn T. Harrell 1990–1993 ................................................................. Walton J. McLeod III 1993–1996 ............................................................................Jane C. Davis 1996–1999 .......................................................................... Harvey S. Teal 1999–2000 ................................................................ Harry M. Lightsey, Jr. 2001 .............................................................................. Ronald E. Bridwell 2002–2005 ........................................................................ John B. McLeod 2005–2008 ............................................................................. Steve Griffith 2008–2011 ................................................................. Robert K. Ackerman 2011–2017 ..................................................................... Kenneth L. Childs 2017– .................................................................................. Wilmot B. Irvin 2 CHANCE ENCOUNTERS: SERENDIPITY AND THE WRITING OF TWO CHARLESTONIANS AT WAR 82ND ANNUAL MEETING ADDRESS BY DR. BARBARA L. BELLOWS (Presented, 28 April 2018) I am grateful to Dean Lacy Ford for his introduction. His kind words mean the world to me. Lacy and I were graduate students together in USC’s department of history. Having him here today contributes to my feeling of coming home to Carolina. When I began my work, Lacy was already the acknowledged “oracle” of the Caroliniana Library. His work ethic was daunting and provided a challenging model for the other students. We did not have Google in those days, we had Lacy. He had seemingly read everything and knew everyone, could speak with equal fluency about the Gini co-efficient of inequality as well as the cultivation of tobacco, and was already giving papers at academic conferences. Always prepared to point other students in the direction of new sources and ideas, Lacy displayed the qualities that would later make him such a fine teacher. His mild-mannered conciliatory temperament helped diffuse scholarly agreements that arose from time to time and would later make him such an effective administrator. In one realm only 3 did his equilibrium falter. In his advocacy of Gamecock sports; he took no prisoners. During the early 1980s when we were both writing dissertations, the South Caroliniana Library was our intellectual home and the center of our working world. A treasure trove of primary documents burdened its shelves and enticed eager young scholars seeking to unravel mysteries of the past. But first, we had to convince a dubious Mrs. Eleanor Richardson that we were serious and knew what we were about. Next, further scrutiny behind the desk in the manuscript room came from young Henry Fulmer, who then looked about twelve years old. Already possessing his elegant manners and speaking with the nineteenth century eloquence of a Jane Austen novel, he took his charge seriously and was quite ready to deny access to the unprepared with the alacrity of a bank manager refusing a loan to those with bad credit. I well remember hopefully handing Henry my call slips and holding my breath to see if this time I had correctly translated the arcane hieroglyphics from the card catalogue. But no. He would sigh, patiently correct my errors, and after a while return heavy laden from the stacks. “Only one item at a time,” he cautioned giving me another hard stare before relinquishing his hold on the folder, still unconvinced of my worthiness. Looking back on those years, I am a bit ashamed how we took the library for granted. As students, we never gave any thought to the 4 generations of selfless, dedicated individuals who emptied their pockets and broke their hearts to safeguard South Carolina’s shared history in very troubled times to build a foundation for our more enlightened future. Libraries are among the sacred places of our civil society. Indispensable as repositories of our past follies as well as our hard-won wisdom, they offer an alternative to fake news and fake scholarship. In preserving the disintegrating books and letters of earlier generations, we also preserve another fragile commodity, the truth. Other students filling those alcove desks and study tables at the SCL, also became my friends and valued colleagues. Each became expert in the topics of their dissertation that later became books with honored places on the shelves of the reading room. Among them were Stephen R. Wise, Carol Reardon, William Piston, Alexander Moore, and Tracy Power. As students of history understand, timing is everything. We were fortunate to be working at the SCL during a “moment” when the study of the South was shifting from the old defensive, filiopietistic, apologetic history and becoming part of the larger national and global movement that looked at the past through the lens of race, gender, and class. The SCL became the holy grail for nationally known scholars anxious to mine its untapped riches. South Carolina’s women, factory workers, free people of color, slaves, poor whites, and its intellectual life, politics, 5 military history, economics all became subjects of intense and original scholarship. One never knew from day to day what luminary might be crowding around the card catalogue with us and combing through those laboriously typed, even handwritten, entries. Carol Bleser, James Roark, Michael P. Johnson, Eric Foner, Leon Litwack, Charles Joyner, Michael O’Brien, and Charles Royster all came to do research and left impressed both with the collections and the staff. Some befriended the star-struck graduate students, shared their insights, and occasionally even sought our opinions. I am afraid it took the recognition of scholars from outside the South to make us realize the potential value of our own state and local history. We felt as if we were part of an important enterprise, not just going through the motions of academic busywork of cranking out a dissertation. We were not just apprentices, passively studying history, we were doing history sifting through primary sources, making discoveries of new facts, and testing our own theories, pursuing research, rather like advanced chemistry students working on their own experiments in their labs across the campus. While finishing his masterful study of family and community in Edgefield County, fashion style-setter Vernon Burton also made cameo appearances on the Horseshoe. Donned in denim overalls, he looked more like the nineteenth-century upcountry farmers about which he was 6 writing that a recent Ph.D. from Princeton.