The South Carolina Historical Society

09/05/2026

This month we're looking back at some of the storms South Carolina has weathered. This image shows damage to Charleston's southern commercial wharf from the Great Sea Islands Hurricane of 1893, which made landfall in late August and caused millions of dollars in damage and thousands of deaths across the region. Do you recognize some of the houses along East Battery visible in the background?

The image is part of our visual materials vertical files.

09/03/2026

Peak hurricane season has arrived in South Carolina, though thankfully quiet, and throughout the month we're sharing hurricane-related imagery from our collections.

Here, a man sits in the window of an overturned house on the beach at Sullivan's Island, a part of the aftermath of an August 1911 hurricane that caused major damage from Beaufort to Charleston.

This image is located within our Visual Materials Vertical Files.

09/01/2026

08/31/2026

Famed author DuBose Heyward was born on this day in 1885 in Charleston. Though he came from a family that could trace its roots to Thomas Heyward, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, DuBose grew up in financial hardship after his father died when he was just three years old. His mother, Jane Screven Heyward, supported the family by sewing and running a boarding house, and she also began writing and performing Gullah stories she had learned as a child.

As a young man, Heyward worked in insurance, which gave him the financial stability to pursue his true passion: poetry. He helped found the Poetry Society of South Carolina alongside John Bennett and Hervey Allen, an organization credited with sparking the Southern literary renaissance of the early 20th century. In 1925, he published his first novel, "Porgy," drawn from his observations of African American life in Charleston. The story would go on to have an extraordinary afterlife, first adapted for the stage, then into the opera "Porgy and Bess" in 1935, a collaboration with George and Ira Gershwin. Heyward later served as resident dramatist at the Dock Street Theatre in Charleston.

08/29/2026

Continuing our back to school series, today's image is a postcard featuring a bird's-eye view of Greenville from the Furman University campus, postmarked 1927.

This postcard is found in our Visual Materials Collection.

08/25/2026

Continuing our back to school series, today's image is a 1927 photograph showing a lively school day at Yorkville Graded School.

Long before the building you see in this 1927 photo, this site was home to the Yorkville Female Collegiate Institute, a private school established in 1852. In 1889, the building became Yorkville's first public school. When fire destroyed it in 1900, a new school was built atop the original stone foundations, preserving the historic footprint.

The new building was completed in 1902, followed by a major expansion in 1922, giving us the Yorkville Graded School building that still stands today. It served as the town's white school until integration reached York's public schools in 1970, after which it operated as McCelvey Elementary until closing in 1987. Today it is the McCelvey Center.

This photograph is found in our Visual Materials Collection.

08/23/2026

Continuing our back-to-school series, today's image is a photograph of children at the Brownfield School in Summerville, SC, taken in 1884.

The Brownfield School (also referred to as Brownfield Academy) was a boarding school, opened in the late 19th century, housed in what was originally the residence of the Brownfield family.

This photograph is located within our Visual Materials Collection.

08/21/2026

Yesterday, we had the pleasure of hosting a group of Charleston Southern University students, all majoring in Education, at the SCHS Museum. The students were led on a tour of the building and learned about how they can implement our archives in their future classrooms by using our Traveling Archive Program.

We are excited to see future educators interested in sharing our state's history with the next generation!

08/20/2026

Each year, the SCHS awards the Gignilliat Scholarship to support students of Huguenot descent who have demonstrated outstanding academic and extracurricular achievements in their pursuits of higher education. The Gignilliat Scholarship Fund was established in 1973 by Thomas M. Gignilliat, who stipulated that the recipients must descend from a Huguenot ancestor who settled in North America prior to November 28, 1787.

This year’s Gignilliat Scholarship recipients are Zain Sy and Hank Aeppli.
Zain Sy attended Saint Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac, Maryland, and is entering his sophomore year at the University of Southern California. He holds a Seal of Biliteracy (French and English) and is studying business and technology.
Hank Aeppli is a Mount Pleasant native and alumnus of Lucy Beckham High School entering his sophomore year at The Citadel. He competes as a student-athlete on the baseball team and is majoring in engineering.