The Southeastern Life Insurance Company Records span the time period of 1905 to 1983. The bulk of the material dates from 1910 to 1942. There are 153 folders of material in seven document boxes, 26 volumes in three record center boxes and one ½ document box, 99 oversize volumes (88 volumes are in 10 oversize boxes), and an oversize charter. They consist of by-laws, a charter, correspondence, contracts, employee and training manuals, memos, personal papers, policy specimens, rate books, reinsurance agreements, reports, tax returns and other tax information, and other material; and oversize material in the form of agent/agency registers, annual statements, cash books, journals, ledgers, a photograph with negative, policy registers, trial balance books, and stock certificates. Included in this record group are such documents as Agent Contracts, Dissolution papers, Group Insurance, Liberty Life Merger papers, Policies and policy samples, Reconstruction Finance Corporation papers, Repurchase Agreements, various State Insurance Department papers, and State Tax Returns. These records are a valuable source of information for charting the development and related history of the insurance industry in twentieth-century South Carolina.

Reinsurance Agreements account for a majority of the non-volume records in this record group. They document Southeastern's management strategies through agreements entered into and contracts made with various reinsurance companies to spread the risk of potential insurance loss. Southeastern contracted or made agreements with twenty-six separate companies for reinsurance, doing so several times with many. These records document Southeastern's reinsurance activities from 1907 to 1936. They also include documentation on the amount of reinsurance paid from 1925 to 1950. By definition, reinsurance is "the transaction whereby the insurer, for a consideration, agrees to indemnify the ceding company (the reinsured) against all or part of the loss which the latter may sustain under the policy or policies which it has issued." In other words, reinsurance is a form of insurance that insurance companies purchase from other insurance companies and is done to reduce the possible maximum loss on either an individual risk or a group of risks.

The bulk of the collection, however, is made up of financial volumes of various types (Annual Statements, Cash Books, Journals, Disbursement Ledgers, Stock Certificate Books, and Trial Balance Books), with most of the volumes dating between 1906 and 1950. These volumes document the company's financial transactions, often on a monthly basis. They are important for understanding Southeastern's growth and development, especially for the period between its founding in 1905 to its consolidation with the Liberty Life Insurance Company in 1941.

Other records vital for a better understanding of Southeastern's business activities over the years, both in-house and out, are represented by Contracts with general agents, including W. Frank Hipp, 1905-1934; Southeast and South Carolina State Tax Returns, 1927-1936; intercession of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation during the Depression years, 1932-1933; and Insurance Department conditions for Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, and West Virginia, 1925-1964.

Important records documenting the company's insurance products are embodied in the pioneering issuance of Group Insurance for workers of the Alice, Easley, and Franklin Mills, 1916; Policies issued covering the lives of private individuals as well as early presidents of Southeastern Life, 1912-1925; and samples of specimen policies for the same dates. Also included is a facsimile of the first policy the company issued to John Adger Law on December 15, 1905 for $5,000.

Records particular to Southeastern and its special, inseparable connection with Liberty Life Insurance Company are the Repurchase Agreements of 1931-1935; the Merger of 1941; and Southeastern's Dissolution, 1968-1971.

Included with this record group are two letters whose content are not especially important but are quite unique as objects because they were typed on cloth stationary. The letters were typed on cloth for two reasons, according to captions at the bottom of each: to celebrate Southeastern's Silver Anniversary, 1905-1930, and interestingly enough, to help the textile situation during the Depression.

Other major correspondents with these records include the Alice, Easley, and Franklin Cotton Mills; Atlantic, Florida, Home Fund, International, Inter-Southern, Jefferson Standard, Kentucky Home, Liberty, Lincoln National, Metropolitan, Missouri State, Pittsburgh, and Southwestern Life Insurance Companies; the Cologne and Mercury Reinsurance, and North American Reassurance Companies; the Southern Surety Company; and such individuals as Charles W. Estes, C.B. Flesher, Walter F. Going, W. Frank Hipp, William E. Holbrook, Joseph C. Long, M.H. Mullins, L.M. Rice, and W.G. Southern.

The oversize items include 99 financial volumes, a 1983 copy of Southeastern's charter (the original is filed in the South Carolina Department of Archives and History), and a photograph of the Southeastern Life Building, which was located at South Main at Broad Street in Greenville, South Carolina, with a negative of the same.