Charleston Chapter SCGS
P O Box 31395
Charleston, SC 29417

An email can be sent to the chapter on our Contact Us page.

Chapter Meetings of the Charleston Chapter are usually held at 2:30 pm on the 3rd Sunday of the month (with some exceptions for holidays). There are no meetings in June, July or August. We meet at The Masonic Center, 1285 Orange Grove Rd., Charleston, unless otherwise indicated in Meetings and Events.

State By-Laws

Chapter By-Laws

Chapter Charter

Chapter Leadership Duties

The Charleston Chapter of the South Carolina Genealogical Society (SCGS) was organized in 1974, at the impetus of several Charlestonians who had been active in the SCGS from its inception in the fall of 1970.  The first organizational meeting of the Charleston Chapter was held on March 19, 1974, at which nineteen signed a petition asking SCGS to charter our Chapter.  Forty-two individuals became charter members of the Chapter in December 1974.

The Chapter has had a newsletter from the early days – specifically from March 1976 when it was a single-paged mail-out simply called “Newsletter.”  The current name Low Country Courier came into use with the November 1977 issue, and digital versions started being distributed by email in 2011.  Digital storage of permanent records was initiated in 2013 (to relieve paper storage stresses on our Archivist), so all extant newsletters are now available through our Members Only section of the website.  Our first website launched in 2001, in conjunction with SCGS efforts, and our Facebook page followed in 2011.

The earliest Chapter meetings were held at the Charleston County Public Library and we have met at various locations since then.  Although we’ve made one attempt to establish a permanent home, the cost proved to be too expensive.  The Chapter had a lending library for a time, but that proved to be unmanageable with only temporary meeting locations, so the material was donated to the Walterboro Historical Society Library in 2005.

In the early years, our educational outreach consisted primarily of annual workshops.  That need diminished as the Charleston Family History Center (FHC) expanded its operations and began conducting workshops of their own.  Since 2009, we’ve found it more feasible to hold smaller training sessions at a variety of locations.

Our Chapter projects have typically related to cemetery records.  With the support of numerous Chapter members, we published Berkeley County Cemetery Inscriptions in 1985, followed by Bethany Cemetery Inscriptions, Charleston, South Carolina in 1992, Cemetery Inscriptions of Charleston County, South Carolina in 1997, and Live Oak Memorial Gardens Cemetery Inscriptions in 2006.  In 2012, we prepared an inventory for the Lewis Christian Union Cemetery in support of the “Seven to Save” project headed by the Preservation Society of Charleston.

Membership numbers have varied from a handful in the early days to a high of about 200 in 1996.  In recent years, our membership has varied from about 125-150.