The police record books in this collection were donated to the Charleston Library Society in 1978. While he was a medical student in 1974, Dr. Konrad Mark had saved them from the demolition site of the former Vanderhorst Police Station. The station was near the present-day site of Charleston Water System on St. Philip Street. The station stood there from 1908 until 1974, when the police department moved to its current headquarters on Lockwood Drive. Later police records covering the twentieth century are held by the Charleston County Public Library. These police records, covering the years 1855 to 1894, contain information related to the arrestee, incident being reported, witnesses, officers involved, sentence and punishment, and often personal effects of the arrestee.
The tax records were donated to the Charleston Library Society after they were deaccessioned by the City of Charleston's Treasurer's Office in 1930. Covering the years 1859 to 1875, records covering taxes on individuals typically include the name of the taxed person with the value of their real estate holdings, stock goods, interest on investments and dividends, enslaved people, carriages and horses, income, dogs, insurance premiums, and the tax rate for each category. Certain volumes also cover poll taxes, capitation taxes on free people of color, business taxes, and real estate taxes.
Scans and transcriptions of each volume are available in our digital collections.
The image above is of the Vanderhorst Police Station, from the 1916 Charleston City Year Book.
These documents reflect the society in which they were produced. Some of the language and situations portrayed in them may be offensive and not appropriate for modern use, particularly related to race, class, gender, physical and intellectual disabilities, religion, national origin, and sexual orientation. The materials included in this collection have been preserved in their original state and context for the benefit of students and researchers, and do not reflect the values and opinions of the Charleston Library Society.
If you come across offensive language in a finding aid, catalog record, or other material description, please contact us at CLS_Corrections@charlestonlibrarysociety.org.
These records cover Charleston from 1855 to 1894, possibly some of the most tumultuous years in a city with an already tumultuous history. Perhaps most notable during this period is the Civil War, 1861-1865.
According to the 1860 census, at the beginning of the war Charleston was home to 23,376 (57%) white people, 3,237 (8%) free people of color, and 13,909 (34%) enslaved persons, significantly more diverse than the nation as a whole. In the years leading up to the war many enslaved people in urban Charleston became more open in their disregard for white oppression, much to the chagrin of disgruntled slaveholders. "Fire-eaters,” who valued slavery over union, were vocal participants in the 1860 National Democratic Convention held in Charleston. The less-devoted secessionists, including the diarist Mary Boykin Chestnut, were more anxious about the growing violence. Free people of color, meanwhile, were caught between racial and familial ties to the enslaved, their status as free persons, and suspicions of disloyalty by white neighbors. This racial element was even more complicated for the high number of free persons who were mixed race. The firing on Fort Sumter by Confederate forces on April 12, 1861 marked the first shots of the Civil War, and the city faced violence, loss, and destruction through the next four years. And yet despite these tensions the constants of everyday life carried on. Including, as the saying goes, death and taxes.
The decades following the end of the Civil War were difficult in their own right. Without the use of unpaid, enslaved labor, the agricultural economy across the South began to crumble. These issues were exacerbated by a series of natural disasters that completed the destruction of the cash crop system. A category 2 cyclone (hurricane) in 1885 and 6.9 magnitude earthquake in 1886 contributed to the downfall of the Carolina rice industry, which depends on carefully curated marsh salinity. These disasters resulted in over 100 deaths and millions of dollars in damage that the area could ill afford. By 1920 upwards of 70% of the state's cotton crop was destroyed by boll weevils.
This period as a whole was also significant for the affect of medicine and disease on everyday life. Inhabitants of Charleston and the South as a whole, with its warm humidity and accompanying mosquitos, were particularly susceptible to tropical diseases like dysentery, typhoid, malaria, and yellow fever, along with the usual melange of infection like smallpox and tuberculosis common in mid-nineteenth century life. Charleston medical practitioners during this time were particularly preoccupied with yellow fever, which caused devastating outbreaks in 1858 and 1876. Professional medical care was often a luxury of the wealthy, though methods taught by inconsistent or incomplete medical educations could involve bloodletting, leeches, induced vomiting, or medications ranging from horseradish to mercury and opium. This high contagion and mortality is a thread running through these police and tax records, as police recorded encounters with the diseased and taxes were paid on the estates of the deceased.
The top image above is from the earthquake and cyclone scrapbook kept by Mayor William A. Courtenay in 1885-1886, available in the CLS special collections. The lower image is the same section of Broad street in 2024, taken from Zillow.
After several iterations of semi-formal paramilitary groups dating to the colonial period, Charleston's first uniformed police force was established in 1856. During the Civil War the city police gave way to military policing while Charleston was under martial law between 1862 and 1877. The city police force was revived in 1865 after the end of the war, and co-policed with federal military police until the end of Reconstruction. The city police was operated by the State of South Carolina from 1896 to 1897.
By 1880 the force included approximately 100 officers. Until 1886 there were two station houses, the Main Station House on the southwest corner of Meeting and Broad Street, and the Upper Station House on King Street between Cannon and Woolfe Street. Both stations were damaged or destroyed by the earthquake of 1886, and were replaced by the Central Police Station at Hutson and King Street at the terminus of Vanderhorst Street in the beginning of 1888. This building served as the primary police headquarters until 1974.
During this period it was also common for police stations to serve as ad-hoc homeless shelters and safekeeping locations for enslaved people. Many police records list people as being "lodged at station house," or as punishment for crimes often "sent to work house" or "sent to House of Correction." In the antebellum period the workhouse, also sometimes called the "sugar house" was almost exclusively reserved for enslaved people, including runaways. Enslavers could pay for the city to punish their enslaved workers for them, including stockades, paddling, whipping, depravation of food and water, and other tortures and physical punishments. The treadmill was particularly popular, forcing prisoners to walk on a stepped cylinder for hours a day in order to grind corn. The workhouse became a segregated Black hospital after the Civil War, and was irreparably damaged in the 1886 earthquake. It stood adjacent to the "Old City Jail" which still stands on Magazine Street.
In the post-Civil War period women's role in society shifted as suffragists and early feminists allowed for more freedom for women outside the home. According to census records the number of employed women jumped from nearly 1.8 million to almost 5.2 million between 1870 and 1900, and female college students grew from 13,000 to 85,000 over the same period. However, this trend did not affect all women equally. By 1900 around 43% of African American women, 19% of foreign-born women, and 25% of first-generation women over the age of sixteen were in the workforce, compared to 15% of white women with American-born parents. Many women were listed as taxpayers in these records, showing them as independent property holders and heads of households and estates. While "coverture" laws made all of a woman's assets the property of her husband when they married, widows and "spinsters" were often masters of their own possessions. Wives and daughters also sometimes managed property in the absence or incapacity of a male family member, like in the case of war, disability, or traveling for work.
Regarding crime and victimhood, white women were perceived as more traditionally domestic and feminine, and therefore more vulnerable and in need of protection. Meanwhile women of color, who were seen as more independent and less refined, were treated as more likely to be criminals rather than victims. While women of various races appear in these records as victims, perpetrators, and witnesses of crimes, it is important to consider the ways in which their circumstances affected the ways in which they interacted with law enforcement. How do punishments compare for similar offenses? Who was believed? What might not appear in these records?
The top image above is the Central Police Station near Marion Square, c. 1888-1895. Courtesy of the George LaGrange Cook Photograph Collection at the University of South Carolina Libraries. The lower image is of the Charleston City Jail, c. 1870-1890. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
The first national income tax was instituted in 1862 with the Internal Revenue Act, which was primarily intended to repay debt incurred by the federal government during the Civil War.
In 1756 South Carolina enacted its first capitation tax, which charged free people of color for the privilege of remaining unenslaved. Violators who did not pay the tax could be fined, imprisoned, or have their property seized, and such cases appear throughout the police ledgers included in this collection. This law remained in effect until the end of the Civil War.
A one-year poll tax was enacted in 1737 and 1786, which only affected white men. South Carolina's constitution, passed in 1778, allowed anyone who paid as mach tax as that due on 50 acres of land to vote. In 1760 an annual poll tax was enacted on free men of color, which was in effect in one form or another until the Civil Rights Era.
Inserted between the pages for Thursday, July 21, 1870 through Saturday, July 23, 1870, this letter to the Mayor of Charleston and the city Aldermen requests funds to help support the family of a Black policeman who was killed in the line of duty. The murder in question, which occurred on the night of July 22, 1870, is recorded on page 222R of this volume. Private Thomas J. Martin was shot by white soldiers who were causing a disturbance on King Street just before midnight. The perpetrators were later acquitted of the crime. Private Martin was the first Black police officer killed in Charleston, and was inducted into the South Carolina Law Enforcement Hall of Fame in September 2020.
The back of Police Volume 1 contains a number of pages of miscellaneous notes, some related and some unrelated to policing. This page appears to contain various addresses, practiced signatures, and attempts at poetry.
Though the address of the Charleston Library Society is currently 164 King Street, the street numbers have shifted slightly over the years. In the late 19th century the present-day location of the Library corresponded roughly to 158-160 King Street. In the monthly tax returns for 1865-1866, 160 King Street was listed as a variety store owned by "E. Lacassagne." In the 1867 City Directory the name is given as Edward Lacassague. This page shows the store owing $2.50 in December 1865. In November 1865 (page 53R) January 1866 (page 54R) and February 1866 (page 55L) they are also listed owing the same amount.
The digitization and transcription of these materials were supported with funding from the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation. We owe a debt of gratitude to the work of our volunteers and interns, who helped us accomplish this massive transcription undertaking. Their work will help scores of future researchers find and decipher these important records and ensure their accessibility for future generations. They include Rylie Albers, Collin Butler, Sterling Chancley, Jennifer Comer, Danielle Cox, Charles Duffy, Hannah Everage, Pam Felton, Debbie Fenn, Katie Gardner, Chris Hayes, Lisa Hayes, Dana Leander, Harrison McGlothlin, Candace Moore, Madeline Ritger, Doug Rivet, Ana Rucker, and Jules Silberberg. Their assistance has been invaluable. Thanks to Jason Crowley at the Donnelley Foundation, Nic Butler at the Charleston County Public Library, as well as Jennifer Comer, Lisa Hayes, Laura Mina, Heather Rivet, James Davis, Debbie Fenn, and Danielle Cox at the Charleston Library Society for their hard work in completing this project.