If you are interested in searching through the records of South Carolina Baptist Churches, you might want to check out The South Carolina Baptist Historical Collection at Furman University’s James B. Duke Library. This expansive collection documents individuals, churches, and associations in South Carolina Baptist history from as far back as the early 1700s. Currently, the collection contains the records of over 500 individual South Carolina Baptist churches, numerous published books as well as church histories, congregational records, association minutes, biographical materials, newsletters, hymnals, and sermons.
Most of the church records are scans of the original handwritten or type-written documents saved to microfilm. Unless you are a serious researcher, you may not even know what microfilm is! It is a reel of negative film containing miniature photographs. You read them using microfilm machines which are available in the first floor of the Duke Library.
Now, thanks to the collaborative efforts of students and staff in the Digital Collections Center as well as the Special Collections and Archives, these microfilm records are being scanned and made available online.
View South Carolina Baptist Church Records online.
So far, nearly 90 reels of microfilm have been made available online, but the collection continues to grow. Over the next 2 years, the site will include all the church records which we have copyright permissions to make available, an estimated 400,000 individual pages.