For much of the 20th century–at least as far as academia was concerned–“Early America” meant New England. It didn’t mean American Indian; it didn’t mean New Sweden or New Amsterdam; it didn’t mean Spanish Florida; and it certainly didn’t mean Colonial Carolina. This has changed over over the past decade, with more inclusive anthologies and expanded online archives that provide the tools scholars need to teach and write about a more inclusive early America.
The Colonial South Carolina Sourcebook emerges from this inclusive endeavor. An ongoing, student-led project, archival recovery project, the Sourcebook curates individual artifacts transcribed, edited, and introduced by students studying colonial American literatures at the College of Charleston. Using online resources, databases and, most importantly, the resources at the South Carolina Historical Society, students have developed distinct thematic clusters containing literary and cultural materials that dates from early exploration narratives in the late seventeenth century to the signing of the Declaration in 1776.
The thematic clusters currently reside in five broad categories: “Commerce & Economy,” “Colonial Lives,”Medicine & Health,” and “Exploration, Contact, and Settlement.” Within those categories we have an important debate on currency, early medical writing, personal letters focusing on key events of the time such as the Charleston fire of 1740, a cluster of poems and literary essays from the Gazette, and documents pertaining to early ethnic communities, including early Jewish and Huguenot settlers. As an ongoing project, the Sourcebook is necessarily incomplete and will be added to in future years. Though there are no units focusing in major events such as the Stono Rebellion–a crucial early slave revolt–issues of race and slavery are frequently reflected in these documents, and commented upon by their editors.
Each cluster contains a brief introduction to the thematic unit along with two more expansive headnotes for each document. Footnotes pop up when you hover over the green text, and a a bibliography of sources and further reading arrives at the end of each thematic header.
Contact Dr. Anton Vander Zee if you have any questions about the project. I would like to thank Dr. Thomas Hallock at the University of Southern Florida as well as his students for their groundbreaking archival project Visions of Florida from which my own class learned a great deal. Thanks as well to Mary Jo Fairchild and her colleagues at the South Carolina Historical Society for hosting me and my students on numerous occasions. And thanks, finally, to Academic Affairs whose Small Grant supporting innovative teaching and learning helped to make this project possible, as well as to the English Department at the College of Charleston for encouraging this class.
Credits:
Web Design
Anton Vander Zee
Editors:
Indigo, Carolinas Cash Crap: Taylor Edwards
The Great Currency Debate: Joshua Blackie
Recipes of the Pinckney’s: Katie Stitely
Music History: Sabrina Hinson
Print Culture: Emily Wise
Charleston Fire of 1740: Ben Guion
Music History: Sabrina Hinson
The Fusion of Huguenot Families: Kathryn Vaughn
Healing Charleston: Jasmin Wilson
Epidemics of Colonial South Carolina: Sarah Oates
Carolina Travel Narratives: Sarah Williams
Catawba Indians: A Native Community of South Carolina