About this Archive

This site preserves two scrapbooks compiled by members of the FitzSimons family — descendants of Christopher FitzSimons (1762–1825), an emigrant from Dundalk, County Louth, Ireland, who arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1783 to inherit property left him by an uncle of the same name.

The original albums contain genealogical charts, handwritten memoranda, family letters (some still tucked into their original envelopes), newspaper clippings, photographs, and ephemera assembled across more than a century of family record-keeping.

The volumes were professionally scanned page by page — including each loose letter pulled from its envelope — yielding nearly a thousand individual images. This site presents those scans alongside transcriptions of the handwritten material, since much of the cursive is difficult to read for those unfamiliar with nineteenth- and early twentieth-century hands.

How to use the archive

Browse by volume to read the books in order, page by page, as you would the originals. Use the People and Places indexes to follow a single thread — every transcribed page is tagged with the people and places it mentions, and those tags are linked throughout.

Each page view shows the original scan alongside a clean transcription. Click any image to view it at full resolution.

About the transcriptions

Transcriptions aim for fidelity to the original — preserving spelling, punctuation, and abbreviations as written. Where a word is uncertain it's marked [uncertain], and where the original is illegible the gap is shown as [illegible]. Editorial notes appear in italic brackets.

Contributing

If you're a family member with corrections, identifications, or additional context — please reach out. Notes on uncertain readings, identifications of people in photographs, and context for letters are especially welcome.