09/15/2026
A quick note from your OCHS director 💙
I want to share something so our community understands how the Historical Society actually runs day-to-day.
OCHS is run almost entirely by one person, me, as a full-time volunteer. I’m fortunate to have a small group of dedicated volunteers who come one day a week each to help with things like greeting visitors, pulling and organizing files for research, etc., and I’m grateful for every bit of it. But the vast majority of what keeps OCHS running, the research, reports, events, outreach, newsletter, website, social media, accounting, grant research, replying to emails, data entry, phone calls, instant messages, is still done by me. I also run a separate small business outside of OCHS.
Because of that, I’m not available 24/7, and I want to be upfront about what that means: The Society is open to the public Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday, 10am-4pm. That’s actually a change I made when I first took over, OCHS was only open sometimes on Tuesdays (if you could catch someone there), Wednesdays, and the first Saturday of each month. I expanded our hours because not everyone has the first Saturday of the month available, and honestly, what about the other Saturdays? If this Society is going to last, it needs to be accessible to everyone, not just retired folks or people whose jobs happen to be closed on Saturdays, and the foot traffic we get now shows that expansion was the right call.
On Tuesdays and Fridays, we’re closed to visitors, but I’m still working, sometimes on my own small business, sometimes on housework, and often on OCHS tasks I can’t get to when we’re open, and most days, it’s honestly all of the above at once.
And 4pm isn’t always really 4pm. If a patron is still with us when we close, I’m not going to rush them out the door because the clock struck 4. In the early days especially, there were many days I arrived at 8am and didn’t leave until 9 or 10 that night, and I don’t even live in town. I’ve also come in on my own days off for out-of-state visitors, because when someone uses their limited vacation time to come research their family, that means something to me. Wanting to know where you come from, wanting your ancestors to be remembered instead of forgotten, that’s special, and I want to do what I can to help make it possible. If that means opening the Society on a Monday because that’s the one day someone could get away from their normal life, then so be it.
My real days off are Sunday and Monday, and I try to genuinely disconnect during that time so I can be present with my family. When my husband and I walk in the door after work, our phones go away and Do Not Disturb goes on. We only get about two hours together on weeknights and one full day together each week, and we want to actually be present with each other, not half-there while scrolling. We believe in what’s sometimes called the String Theory of Communication, and we try hard to practice it. (And for anyone wondering, Do Not Disturb doesn’t block everyone, true emergencies and the people who genuinely need to reach me can still get through.)
Calls, texts, emails, and instant messages may not get an immediate reply, or even a same-week reply. That doesn’t mean they’ve been ignored, it means I’m working through everything as I’m able to. And please don't feel the need to send the same message again, or send it a different way, or through a different person, when it isn't an emergency or time sensitive. Your phone/email/instant message already shows you it went through, or gives you an error if it didn't. And sometimes I've genuinely seen a message and just haven't replied yet, because I want to keep the notification sitting at the top of my phone as a reminder to come back to it.
One more thing worth saying: not everyone operates the same way. Just because someone replies to a text or email the second they get it doesn’t mean everyone does, or should have to. If you’re old enough to remember answering machines, you’ll remember a time when leaving a message meant waiting for someone to get home and call you back. Shocking😱, I know!
I also want to be honest about something else: information isn’t always available the moment someone walks through the door or sends a message. OCHS holds a collection that’s been building since the 1960s, and since I took over in 2023, our volunteers and I have been steadily working to organize it, building finding aids and entering papers, books, artifacts, photos, and maps into our computer system so they can eventually be searched by keyword. That work will take years to complete.
Research takes time. Answering questions properly takes time. I never want to give anyone a half-finished answer just to respond quickly, your family history deserves better than that. I know we live in a world where information usually feels one keystroke away, but that’s not how it works in a place that’s still being organized, piece by piece, by hand.
I share all of this because I love this work and I want to keep doing it well, for years to come, without burning out.
Thank you for understanding and for supporting the Orangeburg County Historical Society. Laura
Send a message to learn more
