SOUTHERN AUTHORS EXPO HELPS OEDGS TURN PAGE

Gathering Is First Since Society’s Fight For Survival

If the red brick walls of the old cotton warehouse in downtown Johnston could talk, oh the tales they could tell. This coming weekend, the air within those walls will be electric again with countless more stories, yarns and remembrances.

The 2025 Southern Authors Expo, a presentation of the Old Edgefield District Genealogical Society, will welcome writers from across the Palmetto State to Johnston this Saturday, September 13 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Expo will unfold at the new Johnston Genealogical Research Center, 405 Calhoun Street.

“We haven’t had this since 2021, so we’re just so excited,” said Tonya Browder Guy, director of the Old Edgefield District Genealogical Society. “We’ve invited 12 very well-renowned authors to come who are Southern historical authors, and they are going to be here with their books to sell and to talk to spectators as they come in.”

In addition, Expo exhibitors will include two notable book dealers that specialized in Southern history, Battery Street Books in Columbia and Southern Historical Press in Greenville. Representatives from the Edgefield County Historical Society, the Augusta Genealogical Society and the Beech Island Historical Society also will be on hand.

“For the public to be able to come in and meet these authors in one place, it’s just so special,” Tonya said.

Admission to the Southern Authors Expo is free, but visitors are encouraged to bring plenty of money to buy and take home books from the participating authors. Among the notables who will be in Johnston for the day are:

• Dr. Walter B. Curry Jr., author-in-residence at the Aiken Center for the Arts, who specializes in books on African-American history through ancestry;
• Patricia G. McNeely, former reporter for The State, Greenville News and Columbia Record and Professor Emeritus at the University of South Carolina;
• Dr. Alexia Jones Helsley, veteran of the S.C. Department of Archives and History and archivist at the USC Aiken;
• Karen Stokes, archivist at the South Carolina Historical Society in Charleston; and
• Marion F. Sturkey, retired military pilot and founder of Heritage Press International.

Dr. Helsley also will be the featured speaker at an added event Sunday at 3 p.m. She will discuss her book, Wicked Edisto: The Dark Side Of Eden, which recounts the “often-overlooked criminal and scandalous history of Edisto Island.”

OEDGS Finds Warm Welcome In Johnston

The Southern Authors Expo is the first signature event to be presented at the Johnston Genealogical Research Center since it opened this past March with great fanfare and enthusiasm from the Johnston community and the wider family of history enthusiasts. The Society’s stunning headquarters may be new to them, but it was built in the 1920s and donated to the Town of Johnston in 1998 by the Edwards family in memory of brothers V.E. Edwards and E.B. Edwards

“We recently moved from the Town of Edgefield, where we had been for 40 years,” Tonya said. “Johnston welcomed us here, and they completely renovated this entire warehouse just for our Genealogical Society.”

The Mobley Library branch of the ABBE Regional Library System is just a few steps away in warehouse space also renovated by the Town in 2000-2001. Another former warehouse in the Edwards Building is currently under renovation and soon will become an artists’ workshop.

The addition of the Genealogical Research Center is positioning Johnston to contend for the distinction as the cultural epicenter of Edgefield County.

“We want to start doing walking tours here in Johnston. We want to start doing more lectures. We’ve got a whole lot of things we want to do for outreach to bring people in and get them excited,” Tonya said. “Especially the youth. We want to do a lot of youth activities to get the young people involved and give them a new appreciation for history.”

On their end of the building, the Johnston Genealogical Research Center has become a 4,500-square-foot jewel with an open floor plan lovingly restored to comfortably welcome researchers and host special events such as the Southern Authors Expo. The center’s features include a climate-controlled archives vault for the Genealogical Society’s rare books and oldest, most valuable documents and a small folk art gallery near the entrance that will spotlight rotating examples of local artisans’ talents.

The current exhibition features Edgefield pottery handcrafted by Tonya’s husband Justin and classic black-and-white photography.

“We wanted it to stay very rustic and original to itself, so they left the exposed bricks and the exposed rafters, and we’re very excited about that,” Tonya said.

Future Events Light The Way For Embattled OEDGS

The Old Edgefield District Genealogical Society has more than 5,000 books in its current collection, but loyal members continue to donate books, family documents and other resources for researchers. The collection includes more than 2,000 family histories and bound copies of The Edgefield Advertiser newspaper dating back to before the Civil War.

“In this digital age, people want to be able to sit in their pajamas at home and do research, and I understand that,” Tonya said. “But there’s nothing like coming into a facility like this and sitting down with original records, original documents and books, and sitting there combing through them, looking for information on your family.”

The Old Edgefield District Genealogical Society is the largest such society in South Carolina. Its membership spans across 40 states and into other countries; its membership roster is larger than even genealogical organizations in Charleston and Columbia.

The new Johnston Genealogical Research Center is a godsend for an organization that in late 2022 found itself locked out of its longtime home at the Tompkins Library in downtown Edgefield by that building’s owners, the Edgefield Civic League. A complex and contentious saga of Edgefieldian proportions ensued, a twisted battle of wills and egos pitting the genealogists against some of the most storied family names in the old town’s history and moneyed transplants with their fingers now stirring in the community’s cultural melting pot.

The ugly drama was litigated openly on the pages of the local media, in the court of public opinion and ultimately in the judiciary. It is a dark shadow that Tonya and company at the Old Edgefield District Genealogical cannot legally discuss and would just as soon forget.

The grand old organization is thankful to have those clouds far behind them and to have found a beautiful and welcoming new home in downtown Johnston. The future for those who love history and genealogy begins this weekend with the Southern Authors Expo, and the road ahead looks bright indeed.

“We’re going to have kinds of events coming up from now through the winter,” Tonya said. “We want to do a cemetery workshop. We want to have some Saturday events where we have maybe a lunch and a lecture, and next year we hope to have the Southern Studies Showcase again. It’s our two-day genealogical workshop.”

For more information on the Old Edgefield District Genealogical Society, visit their website or call Tonya Guy at (803) 991-0492

About the Author

Tony Baughman

Administrator

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