Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

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Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

• Account books--South Carolina.
• Drug stores--South Carolina--History--19th century.
• Medical care--South Carolina--History--19th century.
• Medicine--Formulae, receipts, prescriptions--History--19th century.
• Obstretrics--History--19th century.
• Pharmacists--South Carolina--History--19th century.
• Physicians--South Carolina--History--19th century.
• Southard, William O. (William Oscar), 1851-1916.
• Union County (S.C.)--History.

• Mary Malvina Southard Geer Papers (#5005), Southern Historical Collection, Library of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

William Oscar Southard was born in 1851 in Brooklyn, N.Y., the son of Mr. and Mrs. Levi Southard. As a teenager, William O. Southard moved to Cedar Springs, S.C., to live with his maternal aunt, Mrs. Spring. Southard married Sarah Caroline Bates (called Sallie) of Batesville, S.C., in 1874, and then enrolled in the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, Ga. Southard earned an M.D. degree and apprenticed with his brother-in-law, DuGar Bates. He then established a family practice in Jonesville, S.C., south of Spartanburg, S.C., in Union County. Southard operated a drug store in the same brick building as his medical offices, serving as his patients' physician, surgeon, and pharmacist.

The collection includes chiefly account books, 1880-1907, of William O. Southard, physician and pharmacist of Jonesville, S.C., in which he kept records on his patients. An alphabetical listing of patient names generally precedes the financial records in the books. Entries record charges for visits, obstetrical cases, prescriptions, and details of other medical care. Records show that Southard received payment in goods as well as cash for his services. One account book, 1880-1887, also includes lists of drugs purchased for Southard's pharmacy and formulas for remedies to treat diarrhea, dysentary, dropsy heart, and fever.