Museum Director researching ‘The Great War’ in Berkeley County
Published: 15 November 2024
By Matt Bise
via The Berkeley Independent newspaper (SC) website
Berkley Independent
Berkeley County Museum Director Chelsy Clark Proper at her desk in Moncks Corner.
World War I is also called “The Great War” because of its scale and carnage. The United States declared war on Germany in 1917, and it is estimated that more than 400,000 U.S. men and women enlisted during the 19 months of fighting, although some did not serve in Europe. Of those who did, 53,000 did not make it back.
Service members either volunteered or were drafted. Berkeley County, a much different place back then, was the home of 534 service members between 1917 and 1918. Due to some painstaking work, their names are listed on Berkeley County Museum’s website, BerkeleyCountyMuseum.org.
Berkeley County Museum Director Chelsy Clark Proper said compiling the information is a labor of love.
The list shows all people with Berkeley County connections who were born or lived in the county and who enlisted in the U.S. forces during WWI. The names were compiled from the multi-volume “Official Roster of South Carolina Soldiers, Sailors and Marines in the World War, 1917-18,” released in 1929.
“I have gone through the 1929 list of every soldier, every nurse, every marine that registered from Berkeley County and I put them on our website,” Proper said.
From that list, she now searches for any information on relatives who can offer additional information on the service members to get more details on the story of each of the 534 enlisted members.
“I have started to compile,” she said. “I have asked residents for pictures of anybody in their family. I have an ancestry site I look through.”
She said she even goes as far as trolling through graveyards to look for familiar names.
It all started in 2018 on the 100th anniversary of the armistice that Germany signed to end the war. She is doing good work, considering the nationwide database has about 2,000 names of the thousands who served at the time.
Read the entire article on The Berkeley Independent website.
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