Tours—Popular in Our Society Programming

Posted on May 15, 2025 by Julie Putnam — Leave a comment

Tour of Historic Quaker Cemetery

Were you part of the KCHS’s recent Members-Only walking tour of Quaker Cemetery April 13, 2025?

Society members sometimes have members-only tours when crowd-size must be limited due to space or special circumstances. Sometimes members are invited on tours to help provide feedback related to Society goals, or to assist related historical organizations meet their goals.

At Quaker Cemetery, keen crowd interest was awakened in “lesser known or overlooked figures in history” who were called to attention by a tour prepared for us by Quaker Guardian Angels guide Darlene Cantey, speaking beside a number of early nineteenth century gravesites. Planning for additional such tours and research on other such figures has since been urged, so more opportunities like this may become available. Many compliments were paid to the accomplishments of the new volunteer group at the historic cemetery. We expressed appreciation to them by donating a fresh three-volume set of the KCHS-published Kershaw County Cemetery Survey for reference.

More on Society Tour Programming

Additionally, Society members pursuing special interests are sometimes invited to join tours or activities related to those interests in order to communicate with related local organizations or projects and share back and forth with them the information from their groups and ours. Numbers of our members are now and have lately been involved too in SC 250 events and activities at Historic Camden and the battlefields of the Battle of Camden and of the Battle of Hobkirk’s Hill within our town’s limits. We call attention to the Experience Camden website to keep in touch with opportunities. The Kershaw County Revolutionary War Visitors Center provides many displays of interest.

In recent months for example, some involved KCHS members enjoyed arrangements made of closeup views and explanations during archeological activities ongoing in winter 2025 at Historic Camden. In turn, we shared with archeologists some of our KCHS tour guides of the county and publications that describe specific sites of interest to them. We look forward to the group’s scheduled return for more work next year.

Sometimes we use our Kershaw County Historical Society Facebook to report on Society events, so keep in touch with that page too. [For example, review our Facebook on 2024’s Feb. 18 private-property tour of the preserved intact Adamson Indian Mounds within the Camden city limits, followed two months later, April 20, 2024, by an Artifact-Identification Day at the Camden Archives and Museum, co-sponsored by the Archives and KCHS. Chris Judge, assistant director of Native American Studies at USC-Lancaster, led both activities and compiled information gathered here with his research from other areas.

Annually Expanding Tour Opportunities

Each spring KCHS members are eligible to attend at reduced expenses the highly regarded three-day Landmark Conference of the Confederation of South Carolina Local Historical Societies. KCHS continues long-time membership and participation. Each year the Landmark Conference meets in a different SC town, which displays its historical pride and opens sites both public and private to attendees. Programs and tours are included, as well as an awards program which often recognizes our area through our nominations. This year, March 27-29, 2025, Landmark met in Sumter.

Check out KCHS Facebook for our area’s top award winners—Tony Scully and Rickie Good—in last year’s 2024 Landmark honors awards March 21-23 in Orangeburg.