The City of Charleston’s General Collection is a treasure trove of information and stories
Treasure Hunting has a certain allure, mystique, and excitement to it. Who didn’t get caught up in Raiders of the Lost Ark or National Treasure? And in our very backyard is one of the best treasure-hunt stories around: the discovery of the Hunley. Many of these stories, whether on a movie screen or happening in real life, start with a trip to an archive.
Recently, the City of Charleston undertook a major overhaul, organization, centralization, and digitalization of the treasures found in its archives. Many people were involved in this monumental task. One lady in particular who helped sort, file, and bring to archival attention was Ernestine Fellers.
Ernestine is a treasure within herself. She was honored at a 2023 City Council meeting for her work, with Meg Moughan, Records Manager, providing the words:
“When I started with the City almost ten years ago, I entered a warehouse space out on Savannah Highway that was full to the brim with boxes, and I had no idea how I was going to make my way. From that day until to this day, Ernestine has been my guide through records management. Her knowledge of the history of Charleston surpasses anything I know. She can recall anything about history from the time that she was born practically. For the time that I’ve been with the City, Ernestine has been working on something that we call the General Collection which was sort of a vertical files of City records, newspaper clippings, some might call it odds and ends, but it really is sort of our Google or our encyclopedia. It’s a guide path to a lot of what we have in Records and to us in Records, the name General Collection just didn’t do it justice. So, in December when Ernestine retired, we, in Records, renamed the collection the ‘Ernestine Fellers City Reference Collection,’ and we’re going to frame it and put it on a plaque in Records Management. It just imbues her spirit and her love for the City. Thank you.”
On June 27, 2025 an open house provided a peek into these archives and what is a resource treasure for locals doing the deep dives into the history of the City of Charleston.
For us west of the Ashley, though, there’s a caveat. St. Andrew’s Parish was not a part of the City of Charleston until the early 1960s. A few items surface in the archives before that time about the land to the west, like the work to get water to the Parish in the late 1930s and early 1940s, recorded in the Council minutes.
This was partly because the St. Andrew’s Parish Water Commission coordinated efforts with Charleston for this major infrastructure project. However, once the initial annexation occurred in 1963, our business became city business, and the collection includes more modern information.
Stories? Treasures? Contact local author and historian Donna Jacobs at westashleybook@gmail.com.
