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Research
About this Project
As part of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, we are launching the Oliver Hart Papers, a collection of manuscripts, journals, and sermon notes from the American Revolution era. Reverend Oliver Hart (1723–1795) was an influential Baptist minister, educator, and community leader in Charleston, South Carolina. He played a key role in the development of early Baptist institutions in the South and was part of a broader network of religious leaders whose ideas helped shape social and cultural life in the colonial and Revolutionary periods.
Hart lived through a time of significant political and social change, including the American Revolution, and his writings reflect both his religious work and the wider world around him. His papers—spanning more than fifty years—include correspondence, diaries, and sermon notes that document daily life, religious practices, and community relationships in early America. For researchers, this collection provides valuable insight into how individuals and communities experienced and interpreted the Revolutionary era, particularly in the South.
The University of South Carolina Libraries Digital Collections Department has been digitizing primary source materials since 2004, making unique historical documents freely available online for research and discovery. To help users find and use these materials, we create descriptive metadata and, when possible, use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to extract searchable text from typed documents.
However, handwritten materials present a challenge. OCR technology cannot reliably read handwriting, and many handwritten documents remain only partially described. As a result, valuable historical content can be difficult to search, read, and fully understand.
This is where you can help. By transcribing handwritten documents, you make these materials more accessible, searchable, and useful for researchers, students, and the public.
What will happen to your transcriptions?
Your contributions will be reviewed and then added to the University of South Carolina Libraries Digital Collections, where they will be published alongside the original images. This will make the documents fully searchable and freely accessible to anyone—supporting research, teaching, and public history.
By participating, you are helping to preserve the past and make it easier for others to discover, read, and understand these historical records.