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The University of South Carolina is conducting a research project that examines the history of woodworking in the state, which researchers say originated in Sumter.
“I was really surprised by the scale of it. It's crazy how much it's affected this country," said Stevie Malinowski. What I got was absolutely massive and bigger than I expected. It's been done in the Northeast, the Midwest, the Pacific. My God, they've all moved here. Awesome! That's where it's from. All came."
Malinowski went through 27 boxes, including information on the Williams Furniture Company, the state's largest furniture company, which began as a union shop in Sumter in the 1930s.
"It's huge that it's in Sumter and a lot of people don't know about it," said Annie Rivers, executive director of the Sumter County Museum.
The collection will be donated to South Carolina Libraries.
"We have over 200,000 items in our collection, including texts and documents, which is fantastic," explains Rivers. "It's a big collection, but we're limited in manpower, limited in resources, so we haven't been able to give it as much attention as we'd like."
But now Malinowski is helping to scan the artifacts and digitize them to make them publicly available online.
"I love it! I think it's great!" cried Malinowski. "I think it's really interesting to have artifacts from that... I mean I was looking at one today, I think it was 1869 and it's so cool that you have the ability to hold it."
"I think we're just not telling the story," said Jessica Elfenbein, chair of history at the University of Southern California. "In the story we learn something about the state, but it is very important."
In 2017, Elfenbein began researching forest conservation and degradation, exploring Congaree National Park to understand human history.
"It made us realize that South Carolina has a lot of timber history that is hidden from the public in many ways," said Elfenbein.
Elfenbein told me that in three years of research, the furniture company had influenced the state, first becoming a woodworking center in many parts of the country, when the family applied for a financial grant to build Williams-Brice Stadium.
But [residents], for the most part, do not know that it is connected to the largest furniture factory in the state in Sumter.
Graham Duncan works with South Carolina Libraries to raise awareness of why Ken has created such a collection.
"I don't think this industry has historically been well understood in South Carolina," Duncan said. "So we can do more to make materials available to researchers, to community members, to students, to be able to use these things to explore South Carolina, to tell their stories, that's important."
This fall, a department at USC will turn these artifacts into a traveling exhibit. Digitization is expected to be completed - and the community will have access to all files - within two years.
