Minute book, 1854-1867

Oversize volume (March 8, 1854 - October 16, 1867) detailing weekly and annual meetings, listing officers and members who attended, applied for membership, or relief, were fined, elected to office, died, etc. There are periodic accountings of the society's finances, including payments for various liquors for their meetings (including ale, brandy, scotch, madeira, whiskey) and cigars, lists of those stipendiaries on the Society's bounty, and various changes to the Society's rules. Periodic mentions of schooling of children refer mostly to paying of fees to educate children in a variety of schools in town, with later (pp. 175-178, 180, 183) references to the Society's endowing the free, common and normal schools in Charleston, with mentions of starting what later became Memminger Normal School. The growing sectional differences and reactions to war are reflected in actions to participate in the memorialization of John C. Calhoun in a statue in Charleston (pp. 5-9, 189-190), congratulating President Richard Yeadon for his defense of the South (p. 120), striking Charles Steedman from membership for being an officer in the Union Navy (pp. 291, 304), protesting the Confederate War tax (pp. 305, 323), moving the meetings to avoid shelling, paying to remove the Society's records from town (p. 374) and suspending some rules due to conditions of war and its aftermath. The eulogy on Samuel Seyle (pp. 99- 101) refers to his saving the Society's records in the fire of 1838; and there are other references to the Society's 100th anniversary and the commissioning of a portrait of president Richard Yeadon, done by Samuel Beaufain Irving, and framed (noting lack of materials due to war shortages) by L. Orcutt (pp. 313, 320, 349-351, 352). The Society met consistently through the war, with there often being no quorum in the final months of 1864. There is a gap between February and September of 1865.