Two account books, 1845-1888 and 1889-1931, recording payments, locations of cemetery plots, age of deceased and other details of burial spanning more than eight decades of interments at this landscape-style cemetery in Charleston, S.C. Information provided in records includes the name of person buried; date of burial; age at death; name of undertaker or funeral home; location of grave; and other information. These entries presumed to be in the hand of Charles W. Stein (1851-1930), who appears in the U.S. Census of 1910 as "Superintendent" of the cemetery. These account books were printed [ca. 1897] specifically for use by Magnolia Cemetery, although one volume includes dates of burials from decades earlier and was presumably copied from earlier business records of the Magnolia Cemetery Company. Many entries include remarks re special conditions, such as mention of reinterment of bodies at Magnolia from a prior burial ground, this includes the entire Bull family, which was removed from the Bull family plot in St. Andrew's Episcopal Church and reinterred at Magnolia in 1904; the inclusion of multiple people over time in a single grave site, especially infants who were buried "at the foot" of other members of the family or infants buried with mothers who died in childbirth; and the condition of a body, Stein noted in the remarks any deaths he found particularly tragic or dramatic including: H.S. Baines, buried 21 Nov. 1897, who was originally incorrectly "buried as H. Johnson, who was drowned and buried in the Grand Lodge lot"; Orran Hill, buried 25 Apr. 1922, who was "blown to pieces in explosion of 800 kegs of black powder at Port Terminals, Charleston, S.C."; the entry for bootlegger H. Frank Hogan, buried 27 Oct. 1927, notes both his murder and his nickname: "Cause of death, homicide. Known as Rumpty Rattles"; Rosalie Carr McCade, buried 23 Jan. 1924, who died at 16 and as Captain of the Girl Scouts was "first female to have taps blown over her grave"; Caroline Ann Mustard, buried 28 Oct. 1924, who died at 100 and was "the oldest person buried in the cemetery to date"; orphaned children including Leon Phinissy, buried 4 Mar. 1903, who "drowned at the Isle of Palms" at age 13, were buried in a special plot of the cemetery identified as the "Orphan House Section." First page of second volume, 1889-1931, includes list of clients identified as "incinerated or cremated" circa 1901-1929; majority of these persons died out-of-state and were cremated to allow travel and return of the remains to South Carolina for burial in a family plot.
