No ties to South Carolina for me. That being the case, I decided to just poke around the South Carolina Digital Library (SCDL). SCDL is a portal to online digital collections held by institutions in South Carolina. There are a variety of collections including full-text books, maps, photographs, manuscripts, and newspapers.
Taking a stroll through the various collection, I found something I’d never seen before. A certificate of departure from the year 1812. This particular certificate is for Nathanial Heyward from Charleston, South Carolina. He was traveling from Liverpool to Boston, departing on 18 July 1812. This document is part of the Heyward and Ferguson Family Papers, 1806-1926 collection held by the College of Charleston Libraries. You can see the original image here.
Even though I have no connection to South Carolina, I was fascinated with all the neat stuff I found in the South Carolina Digital Library. I could have browsed for hours! If I ever do find South Carolina roots, this will certainly be one of the first places I check out, particularly because of the map collection. If you have South Carolina folks in your family tree, I highly recommend that you take a look at this resource.
Genealogy By the States is a theme created by Jim Sanders over at the Hidden Genealogy Nuggets blog.
Thanks for the post on SC! Most of my research is in SC and I love the SCDL. My great grandfather worked in the Mills and just one of the fun things I found on the site was a picture of one of the mills and mill villages that he worked and lived in.
Very cool, Cheri! There is certainly a lot of neat stuff on SCDL. It’s nice to see that universities and public libraries across the country are getting some of their archives collections digitized and making them available online, essentially making them more accessible to all of us.
About a third of my research will be in South Carolina – I’ve yet to really dig in there, but this will certainly be the first place I go. Thanks for sharing!