Horry County Oral History Project

Welcome to the Horry County Oral History Project collection. The collection is comprised of over 100 interviews in various formats, spanning the years 1964 to 2006. There are a few types of interviews: 1) Video interviews, which also contain interview transcripts; 2) Audio interviews, which also contain interview transcripts; 3) Text-only interviews, which have no surviving audio or video component. Thumbnail images reveal the type of interview: video interviews have screenshots of the participants. Audio interviews have an icon thumbnail including a sound icon. Transcript-only interviews have an icon thumbnail including a text icon.

Most of the materials in this digital collection have an analog component available in the University Archives holdings.

* Note: Some of the content in this collection contains language and ideas that some may find upsetting.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

The Horry County Oral History Project began as a result of the publication of CCU history professor Randall Wells' 1990 book, Along the Waccamaw. Wells successfully lobbied Charles Joyner, Director of the Waccamaw Center for Cultural and Historical Studies, to sponsor these subsequent interviews. The bulk of the interviews included in this collection are from this initial phase of the project, and span from 1989 to 2006. Apart from containing fascinating and informative local historical content in themselves, the interviews are a treasure trove of local language practice, and have been used in the past by linguists and related scholars to track local and regional speech variants and colloquialisms.

Project materials consist of over 100 interviews, a mix of audio, video, and textual materials. Many of these were salvaged from interviews conducted sometimes decades before the official project began. There are 18 interviews from 1966 to 1984 that were included in the collection because they have the same major goal of recording historical reminiscences of Horry County residents. Most of these older interviews were conducted by Catherine Lewis and Billy Holliday. Catherine Lewis was raised in Loris, and as County Librarian and the first librarian at Coastal, she was named an Honorary Founder of Coastal Carolina University in 1990. Billy Holliday, a local with ties to Mullins, Galivants Ferry, and Myrtle Beach, was a scholar and past chairman of the Horry County Historical Society. These bona fides reflect the knowledge and expertise that provide for an enriched interview experience.

Project staff transcribed tapes, corrected and edited transcriptions, and obtained permissions to release the materials to the library to make them available to the public. Occasionally, students in Dr. Wells' courses helped with transcript creation and editing. Project staff include:

• Randall A. Wells: Project Director. CCU historian
• Catherine Heniford Lewis: First Librarian of CCU
• David Parker: Videographer. Coastal Carolina Media Center Director
• W. Press Courtney: Videographer
• Dennis Reed: Videographer
• Ann Glesenkamp: Transcriber. HGTC student
• Ann M. Ipock: Transcriber
• Linda Parker: Transcriber

Over a decade after the project's completion, faculty and staff from CCU Libraries and the Horry County Archives Center worked diligently to produce the digitized version of the collection. Staff digitized all audio, video and textual materials available in the holdings of University Libraries and University Archives. Major staff involved in this phase of the project include:

• Ben Burroughs: Director, Horry County Archives Center
• Charmaine Tomczyk: CCU Librarian Emerita
• Scott Bacon: Coordinator of Digital Initiatives, CCU Libraries

Further information about this collection can be found in the following Randall Wells books, available in the holdings of CCU Libraries: Along the Waccamaw (1990); Swamp, Strand and Steamboat (2004); Old Times in Horry County (2007).

Major funders of the Horry County Oral History Project include the South Carolina Humanities Council, the College of Humanities and Fine Arts at CCU, and the Waccamaw Center for Cultural and Historical Studies at CCU.

[Some of the text used in this project overview was taken from Dr. Randall Wells' books.]