SC Book Festival comes to Columbia

Page in History
makes debut at book festival

The cover of South Carolina Obsolete Notes and Scrip by Austin Sheheen

Books honoring a living individual’s contributions are now being placed in the Search Room at the SC Center for Archives and History. The books are part of a new program, Page in History , which is being introduced this weekend at the SC Book Festival.

The new program affords families an enduring way to remember or honor a loved one.

Families or organizations donate funds to purchase a book from a specific needs list. Then a bookplate is affixed inside telling who the gift remembers or honors and who gave it.

A photograph Walker Clarke took at St. Helena’s Episcopal Church in Beaufort inspired the bookplate inside front covers of books given to the SC Archives and History Center's Search Room in honor or memory of an individual. The first book shelved as part of the new initiative was released last year by Austin Sheheen Jr. and given in honor of his late parents, Austin and Lucille Sheheen.

Sheheen’s 368–page, hard–bound copy of South Carolina Obsolete Notes and Script has been praised by collectors and historians for organizing a comprehensive listing of state, bank, railroad, town, city, and private issued money, along with depression scrip.

Additionally, there are miscellaneous notes recounting SC’s financial history. “South Carolina had 23 banks, and I included currency issued by all that I could find,”Sheheen said.

The currency is also an artistic history of the state told through the images, signatures, and graphics that appear on the bills. “For instance, one bill has an image of the Bethesda Presbyterian Church in Camden. Baron deKalb is buried in the front of the church, and the church looks just as it did on that note,” said Sheheen. Sheheen’s CPA practice is located near that historic church in his hometown.

Sheheen gave the book to the Search Room as a tribute to his parents but also because of the help he received from the archives and history department. He also credited other collectors, both contemporary and deceased and the SC State Museum, as sources of information vital to the book’s publication.

For more information on the Page in History program, go to www.schistory.org or call 803-896-6139.