I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Ben Burroughs, Director of the Horry County Archives Center (HCA). Burroughs has been with the archives since its inception in 2006 and is its sole founder, curator, and archivist.
Burroughs first got the idea for archives when he was working for Coastal Carolina University's Coastal Science Center in a historian capacity. He realized there was a need for such a facility, so he approached CCU's then president, Dr. Ron Ingle, with the idea. Dr. Ingle was very receptive and work began on setting up the logistics.
It was decided the archives would be housed in CCU’s Kimbel Library. It is currently made up of three rooms on the second floor: the Local History Research Room; a digitization lab shared with the Institutional Repository; and one office.
Since it is a historical archives, separate from the institutional archives ran by CCU’s History Project Director Charmaine Tomczyk, they wanted a name that would reflect that.
“We deal with the cultural history of the county, really, multiple counties. We cover everything that was the Old Georgetown Judicial District,” Burroughs said. “It is made up of Horry, Georgetown, Florence, Dillon, Marion, and Williamsburg counties. Of those we really focus on Horry, Georgetown, and Williamsburg.”
The name, however, does confuse people.
“People think I work for the county, but I am a part of the university,” he emphasized.
In the beginning, a lot of effort went into curating the collection. Burroughs stressed the importance of networking, particularly at that stage. Since then, records have begun showing up on their own. Local individuals, families, and businesses donate boxes of items they feel would be of local import and interest to others. Burroughs tries to keep the focus to the Old Georgetown District between 1850 and 1950.
His office is stacked high with boxes of donations, as is the digitization lab that houses a scanner and VHS to digital machine. The HCA is able to house some items in the institutional archives storage facility off campus. He has had to redirect many items to the Horry County History Museum, however. And there was a recent loss of local materials that were sent to the South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, when the HCA could not take them from donors immediately.
The large real estate development company Burroughs and Chapin has been working in the Myrtle Beach area since the 1800’s and helped develop some of the Grand Strand’s main attractions. They too have reached out to HCA about donating their old records from the last 100 plus years of business. Burroughs is having a difficult time trying to figure out how to hang on to them.
“There are 2,000 historical records from 1850 forward currently being held by the river in Conway,” he said. So far, the climate controlled warehouse has been safe, but with recent flooding, he is concerned with losing them to water damage.
The public portion of the archives is shelved in the HCA Local History Research Room on the second floor of the Kimbel Library. There, large wooden bookshelves are lined with books, personal papers, photographs, and maps of local historical interest. These items can be searched through the library’s catalog, though they are not allowed to leave the room.
Along the opposite wall are microfiche and microfilm readers, separated by a cabinet full of film. Much within this collection deals with colonial land grants throughout South Carolina. “That’s where a lot of our local history is,” Burroughs pointed out. “It is in those land records.”
At first this room was kept locked and visitors had to sign in with staff to gain access. Past administration, however, wanted it accessible to students as study space. This means Burroughs has to keep a closer watch on things. There has been minimal damage to the facilities over the years, but there is no clear way to combat the problem.
Administratively, the archives have shifted over the last 13 years. It began as part of the library, then moved to become a direct report of the university’s Provost. In 2019, the archives reverted back underneath the library. At various times, the archives has had researchers, interns, and special project staff, but Burroughs has been the only one to stick it out.
The HCA used to host events through out the year. Though their main audience is considered to be CCU's students, the majority of attendees were local community members interested in local history. There were book talks, tutorials on genealogy, and lectures. Burroughs eventually stopped facilitating them since the attendees were older and parking on campus is such an issue. They really struggled to physically access the facility.
The collection too has slowly grown and evolved, but that is how Burroughs said these types of collections should grow -- slow and steady. Items are digitized as much as possible before being returned or sent to elsewhere. There is hope to add more shelving to the Local Research Room. For the most part, though, Burroughs sees HCA as having become primarily a digital archives.
Any preservation needs are met by the same company Kimbel Library uses for their repairs. Some items are simply placed inside of archival containers to protect them as much as possible.
A few years back, HCA received a National Parks grant to create a battlefield website of the area. It took a special project staff member, two years, and $60,000 to complete that portion. However, as Burroughs pointed out, as the collection grows, so does the information the HCA needs to add. The problem is there is only so much one person can do in a work week.He juggles updating the website, with digitizing paper documents, converting VHS taped interviews to digital, and downloading oral histories.
There are plans for a new building to be added to the library beginning this summer with a complete renovation for the current library building to follow. Burroughs said the ultimate goal would be for the archives to have a state-of-the-art facility that can handle the volume of records being received each year. These decisions, though, come from CCU's Board of Trustees.
In the meantime, Burroughs will continue processing materials as fast as he can, in order to preserve as much as he can.
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