Campus News

History prof to expand coroners’ inquest project

Stephen Berry, who holds the Amanda and Greg Gregory Chair in the Civil War Era in Franklin College, received $114,562 from the American Council of Learned Societies for expanding CSI: Dixie, his project that made 19th-century coroners’ inquests for six South Carolina counties publicly available.

The expansion will add more inquests, the U.S. mortality censuses of 1850 to 1880 and early 20th-century death certificates, plus create data search and visualization tools. The resulting information will illuminate the development of the U.S. public health system and offer a look at historical big data.