The concept for a museum in Charleston originated with several men, educated in England, who had seen the British Museum and admired its many specimens. Early collections for this “new” museum combined local scientific specimens with ethnological and zoological materials from all over the world. These objects were destroyed by a fire in 1778 but active collecting resumed by the 1790s. One of these pieces, a grass helmet from the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii), is still on exhibit in Early Days.