Traveling Archive: Transform Your Classroom

The South Carolina Historical Society’s Traveling Archive program transforms your South Carolina classroom into an archive. A classroom set of archival boxes filled with high-quality reproductions of SCHS’ collections–including maps, receipt books, letters, order books, photographs, and more–gives students the opportunity to examine primary sources firsthand. The Traveling Archive program is also accompanied by a career exploration activity that introduces the many uses of an archive!

Education Coordinator Melina Testin will provide students with an overview of archival operations, cover both the merits and challenges of collecting historic documents, and explain the different types of sources. Working in small groups, students will have the opportunity to peruse a box of reproduction materials as they explore a career path that is closely linked with archival research: from teachers and historians to film directors and artists.

The Traveling Archive is currently decked out for the 250th Anniversary of the American Revolution featuring documents concerning pre-revolution Indigenous relations, weather reports from post-siege Charleston, recipes enjoyed by the Pinckney family, and more.