Librarian Emeritus Steve Richardson ’77 volunteers in Special Collections

Steve Richardson has been spending part of his retirement in Special Collections for the past year as a volunteer on a project related to Upstate South Carolina history and culture, one of his main interests and passions. The department recently received a group of papers of Belton Oscar Mauldin ’1860 and the Mauldin and Sloan families covering several decades in the nineteenth century, from his time as a rising Furman student with family ties throughout the Upstate of South Carolina, through his later career as a travelling salesman, which took him up and down the Eastern seaboard. The collection has many letters between Mauldin and his fiancée/wife from his life on the road, as well as his original 1860 diary from his time as a Furman student and eyewitness to South Carolina’s secession from the Union and events in the Upstate leading up to secession. Richardson has been processing the collection and is creating a detailed subject-based finding aid to the correspondence, and we have been grateful to have his knowledgeable and friendly presence around the department this past year. Thank you, Steve!