Identities sought from 1935 photo

Provided by The Charleston Archive

Do you recognize anyone in this outtake from an A.C. Tuxbury Lumber Co. photo? The Charleston Archive is trying to identify them and the more than 180 other people in the original photo.

The Charleston Archive wants your help in discovering the names of 186 people in a 1935 photograph taken at the A.C. Tuxbury Lumber Co. The archive, a department of the Charleston County Library, received the image as part of a donation from Ruth Cupp, attorney and historian.

"It's a photograph meant to document something important to those people," says Nic Butler, archive manager. "They have lined up everyone, and it seems like some kind of a special occasion. I have never seen anything quite like it."

Butler said his department would record any identifications made by members of the community and keep them on file. The information would be useful to people who are engaged in family history research or studying the lumber industry in Charleston's history.

"It would help to humanize that industry in that particular time period," Butler said. "It's one thing to say that Charleston once had a number of large lumber mills, and another to say it employed so and so and to know that they still have family in the area."

Tuxbury, which began operation in 1906, was one of three large lumber companies in the Charleston area, according to information on file at The Post and Courier. The business, which was on Shipyard Creek north of the city, employed between 400 and 500 workers during its peak. It once owned 45,000 acres of timberland but closed in 1939 because of short supply. It cut an estimated 715 million feet of timber during its 33 years, and during its last decade exported most of the lumber it produced to Europe, South America and the West Indies.

Visit http://www.charleston.net/oldphotos to see if you can identify family members or friends in the photo. The archive has posted several views of the photograph that can be enlarged for a closer look.

Those who think they can identify someone in the photograph can leave comments at the site or call Butler at 805-6968 with the information. They also can visit a display in the South Carolina Room of the Main Library on Calhoun Street or leave comments in the library's lobby.

The staff will try to verify identities that are reported using city directories and other sources. Whether it can identify information or not, it will keep it on file so that researchers can consider it.

Without public assistance, the archive may never know who the people in the photograph are or why it was taken, Butler says.

Reach Wevonneda Minis at 937-5705 or wminis@postandcourier.com.