S.C. Encyclopedia | The earliest ferries in South Carolina carried settlers across the Ashley, Cooper, Santee, and other Lowcountry waterways. Early ferries, sometimes called “boats” or “galleys,” were important for transportation but were frequently poorly constructed, haphazardly manned, and expensive to the everyday traveler.
S.C. Encyclopedia | The yellow, or Carolina, jessamine (Gelsemium sempervirens) was chosen as state flower by the General Assembly in 1924. In 1923 the legislature appointed a commission to select a floral emblem. Senator Thomas B. Butler and Representatives George B. Ellison and Thomas Savage Heyward recommended the yellow jessamine to the senate and house on Feb. 1, 1924, and it was promptly adopted by both chambers.
Reviewed by Mike Nelson: I recently saw an Amazon Original Series called The Man in the High Castle. The alternative history angle intrigued me so I watched the first episode and was hooked.
S.C. Encyclopedia | Located at the confluence of the Sampit River and Winyah Bay, Georgetown was founded by Elisha Screven in 1729 and is the third oldest town in South Carolina. Screven vested control of the town with three trustees in 1735. Two years later, all 224 lots had been sold, though not occupied. The General Assembly governed from 1785 until Georgetown was incorporated in 1805. In 1892 the city was reincorporated under a mayor and council.
S.C. Encyclopedia | Yellow fever was one of the most dreaded diseases in South Carolina during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Along with malaria, it helped establish the reputation of the South Carolina Lowcountry as a dangerously unhealthy place for whites and was used to justify African slavery. Like malaria, yellow fever is transmitted by mosquitoes and strikes in warm weather. Unlike malaria, which spread over most of the state, yellow fever was largely restricted to seaports by the habits of the Aedes aegypti mosquito.
S.C. Encyclopedia | Historian Francis Butler Simkins was born on December 14, 1897, in Edgefield, the son of Samuel McGowan Simkins and Sarah Raven Lewis. He attended school in Edgefield and in 1918 received his B.A. from the University of South Carolina. He attended Columbia University in New York City and earned his M.A. in 1920 and a Ph.D. in 1926. In 1928 he accepted a position at Longwood College in Farmville, Virginia, and remained there until his retirement in 1966, except for various positions at other institutions as a visiting professor.
S.C. Encyclopedia | The historian Edward H. Beardsley concluded that the story of public health in South Carolina is a “history of neglect.” Indeed, since 1914, when data on vital statistics in South Carolina were first collected, the state’s residents have been significantly less healthy than most Americans.
S.C. Encyclopedia | South Carolina has two official mottoes. These were engraved on the original great seal in 1777: “Animis opibusque parati” and “Dum spero spiro.”
S.C. Encyclopedia | The South Carolina Christian Action Council is a statewide ecumenical agency embracing many of the state’s major Christian denominations. It provides educational programs for its constituents and a Christian witness in public affairs. Its origins can be traced to 1933 and the formation of the South Carolina Federated Forces for Temperance and Law Observance. Temperance education and alcohol control provided the focus of activity in the early years.
S.C. Encyclopedia | The South Carolina Public Service Authority was established by the General Assembly in 1934 with the power to provide for navigation and flood control on the Santee, Congaree and Cooper Rivers; to generate electricity; to reclaim swampland; and to reforest the state’s watersheds. The prospect of using New Deal funds to build a hydroelectric generating station in the Lowcountry excited many of that area’s powerful legislators. These men envisioned a small industrial empire in the Lowcountry, supplied with Santee Cooper power. They created the Public Service Authority to negotiate with and receive funding from the federal government.
We Can Do Better, South Carolina! (2019) by editor and publisher Andy Brack offers incisive commentaries on the American South, politics, the common good and interesting South Carolina leaders. Available exclusively for Kindle for $7.99. A paperback version will be ready soon. Learn more.
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