Creating a Digital Window into South Carolina History
Boatman who greets visitors to the Between the Waters site paddles through Hobcaw Barony. Photo courtesy of SCETV.
Two NEH grants enabled South Carolina Educational Television (SCETV), South Carolina’s PBS affiliate, to develop Between the Waters, an interactive educational website introducing learners of all ages to one of the state’s important historical sites. Over the centuries, Hobcaw Barony has been a Native American trading post, a coastal rice plantation, and a luxury retreat visited by Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It is now a nature preserve and research center. Between the Waters allows users to explore Hobcaw Barony’s contemporary lowcountry landscape and discover histories embedded in it through links to related archival materials and descriptions. Additionally, the site offers digital collections of primary sources and standards-based lesson plans designed for elementary, middle, and high school students.
Read More
A screen shot of one of the sites users can explore via Between the Waters, the Jenkins House in Friendfield Village at Hobcaw Barony. Photo courtesy of SCETV.
Between the Waters tells the stories of the people who have interacted with the land that now makes up Hobcaw Barony, including local indigenous tribes; enslaved West Africans who worked the rice plantations; and the twentieth-century elites who made the plantation a haven for hunting, philanthropy, and activism. Visitors to the site explore these layered histories through thematic multimedia units embedded in the natural landscape. For example, while gazing on the shore at Clambank Landing and listening to the cries of seabirds, users can explore archival images of environmentalists, women’s rights activist Belle Baruch, and the agricultural practices of the Gullah people. They can watch a video in which the Chief of the Waccamaw Indian People describes the tribe’s history. And they can read about the Atlantic Flyway, the densest bird migration pathway on the continent, which has provided Hobcaw hunters with hefty hauls for countless generations.
Archival photo from the site: women’s rights and environmental activist Belle Baruch (middle right) entertains guests at Hobcaw Barony, which she gradually acquired from her father and eventually transformed into a nature preserve and research center. Photo courtesy of SCETV.
Between the Waters was awarded a Certificate of Merit from the Association for State and Local History and the website continues to attract attention and new users. Co-creators Betsy Newman and Patrick Hayes presented the site to participants in the NEH Summer Institute for K-12 teachers held in Beaufort in 2017 and 2018 and at the 2018 History Film Forum sponsored by NEH and the National Museum of American History. And SCETV’s Education Department has developed a course for recertification credit that guides teachers on an exploration of Between the Waters. Teachers study video and audio segments, interviews with historians and experts, historical documents, maps, and archival photographs. Once immersed in the site and curricular materials, these teachers use them to engage their students.
