The Porcher family history book contains biographical information, reminiscences, and anecdotes about the Porcher family, who lived on multiple plantation properties in Berkeley County, South Carolina. The book also contains numerous photographs depicting plantation houses, chapels, a slave cabin, and portraits of Porcher family members and workers around the properties.
Typescript text of an address delivered at the Charleston (S.C.) Rotary Club on December 22, 1953 by D. A. Amme, Vice President, Board of Firemasters. Speech traces the history of firefighting in Charleston from the 18th century until the 1950s. Also notes the affliation of the police department and lists "Notable Conflagrations."
This diary, written by an unnamed member of the McLeod family, contains entries throughout 1927 and October 1931. Most entries concern the weather, the author's health, and author's interactions with various friends and family members.
“Stories Collected from Slaves” by Leonarda J. Aimar is a bound volume of formerly enslaved people's stories. In her transcription, she attempted to capture the storytellers’ colloquial speech, now recognized as the Gullah language. The volume includes a list of addresses, occupations, and diseases of African Americans during their enslavement; an eye-witness account of the Battle of Secessionville on James Island during the Civil War in 1862; how enslaved people were returned to their slaveholders following the Revolutionary War; and an account of Sherman's march from Savannah, Georgia to Charleston, South Carolina during the Civil War. A formerly enslaved man, Sam, provides a detailed account of being a butler, coachman, and horse jockey. He also recounts how Union Army Major Robert Anderson took control of Fort Sumter and the events that transpired there on April 12, 1861. Other accounts include an enslaved man’s recollections of his time as a servant to a plantation overseer who sympathized with the Union during the Civil War and formerly enslaved man Jim Alston’s detailed eye-witness account of the 1876 Cainhoy Riot.
The Direleton Plantation Memorandum Book was kept by James Ritchie Sparkman beginning in the 1850s; changes in handwriting indicate additional authors and additional uses into the 1900s. The book contains slave records. Records includes slave births, slave deaths, purchases of slaves, sales of slaves, family seperation, measurements for clothing, distribution of blankets, and labor tasks. The book also contains lists of first and last names of agricultural workers after the American Civil War and figures, likely wages paid. There are account records kept for purposes of the Internal Revenue Services, Confederate taxes and bonds, personal and agricultural work purchases, and financial transactions with B.M. Grier, Eliza S. Heriot, Dr. R.S. Heriot, A.G. Heriot (with signed receipts), M.E. Heriot (with signed receipts), and G.A. Thorne. There are transactions with other plantations recorded including Cornhill Plantation, Northampton Plantation, and Birdfield Plantation. There is information on livestock, wines removed from the plantation, and rice sales.
One of three scrapbooks compiled by William Henry Johnson containing, among other materials, photographs depicting scenes of the South Carolina Lowcountry, with descriptive notes. Volume 1 includes photographs depicting cemeteries, churches, plantations, historic buildings, ruins, landscapes, and the interiors of buildings. Subjects include locations in Berkeley County, St. Johns (Berkeley) Parish, Goose Creek, and along the Cooper River. Other sites and subjects include Belmont, Black Oak Church, Bluford, Casada, Cedar Grove, Cedar Spring, Comingtee, a Prioleau family burial ground, Crowfield, Dean Hall Plantation, Dockon Plantation, Eutaw, Eutaw Springs, Exeter, Fairspring, Fort Dorchester, Four Hole Swamp, Gippy, Gravel Hill, the gravestone of Susan Bee, Hanover Plantation, Indian Fields Campground, Ingleside, Indianfield, Liberty Hall Club, Lewisfield, Magnolia Cemetery, monument of Col. Hezekiah Maham, grave of Major Majoribanks, Medway Plantation, Mepkin, a milestone by the Cooper River, Moorfield, Mount Pleasant Plantation, Mulberry Castle, North Hampton, Numertia, The Oaks Plantation, Ophir, Otranto Hunting Club, Parnassus, Pimlico, Pinegrove, Pond Bluff, Pooshee Plantation, John Poppenheim's plantation, Quarter house, Red Bank Hunting Club, an Episcopal church in Pineville, Rice Hope Plantation, The Rocks, St. James Goose Creek church, St. Johns Berkeley rectory site, St. Johns AME Church, a St. Julien family house, a Santee Canal lock, "Sarrazin house," a shanty, Somerset Plantation, Somerton Plantation, "Francis Marion spring," Springfield, Stoney Landing, Strawberry Chapel, Ten Mile Hill, Thoroughgood, Wadboo Barony, Wadboo bridge, Walnut Grove, Walworth, Wampee, Wampoolah, Wappetaw, Washington Plantation, the Whaley place, White Hall, Wiskinboo, Woodlawn, and Yeamans Hall.
A notebook (ca. 1920) containing reminiscences by Rose P. Ravenel, who writes about her girlhood, her relationship with her "mammy" and her French nurse. She describes life at Farmfield Plantation during the Civil War, knitting socks for Confederate soldiers, making paper and envelopes, salt production, molasses candy, flower dolls, and the family's hardships after the Civil War.
