Davidson College is a private liberal arts college located in Davidson, N.C. While the student population is small, about a quarter of the students participate in NCAA Division I sports teams. Prominently represented throughout these yearbooks are the many student athletes and sports events.
For a look at all of the many (over 100!) Davidson College yearbooks DigitalNC hosts, click here. To learn more about Davidson College, click here.
A bond certificate addressed to Jonathan D. Johnson, who purchased $100 Confederate dollars in March 1864.
Over three dozen 19th century and early 20th century Presbyterian Church sermons delivered by Robert Zenas Johnston are now digitized and available on DigitalNC. Also included are reports from 19th century Presbyterian Churches, documents from Rufus Johnston, and correspondence from Mary Gibson, both citizens of Mecklenburg County. All of these documents come to DigitalNC courtesy of our partner, Davidson College as part of their Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded “Justice, Equality, Community: Reimagining Humanities Curricula” project, which is a three-year, campus-wide initiative. All materials digitized for the project by DigitalNC can be found on the exhibit page Nineteenth Century Family Papers and Plantation Records of Davidson College Trustees.
The cover of one of the notebooks used by the Presbyterian Churches of Mecklenburg County, made in roughly 1876.
Johnston’s sermons (over 550!) stretch from 1859 to 1907, until just before his death in 1908. He delivered them all across the state, from Asheville to Shelby, in different cities around Mecklenburg County, and even at the Unity Church in South Carolina. Approximately 61 of those sermons are undated, but they most likely date from the 1800s as well. In many of the earlier sermons, he discussed the Civil War on the local towns. We also have several of his student notebooks, a contract for a teaching position and pastoral position that Johnston was offered, and more.
Also included in this new collection of documents are financial records of Rufus Johnston, including receipts, bonds, and bills of payment. We also received correspondence and letters from Mary Gibson, one of which tells her brother Robert what she would like done with her property towards the end of the Civil War.
Another folder contains a few documents about Davidson College itself. One document was written by Reverend Jethro Rumple, reminiscing about life at the college in the 1840’s. Included is a small handwritten biography by Reverend Rumple about Reverend John Bunyan Shearer, the eighth president of Davidson College from 1888 to 1901. These documents help give us all a greater idea of what living as a student in those times was like. Also included in this batch is a letter written by Rumple to Brother McLaughlin about an 1878 Concord Presbytery Meeting in Statesville, North Carolina.
This collection also includes various reports to and about Presbyterian Churches across the state. A few letters are addressed to synods, while others are reports on new developments within the church. There are also several notebooks, copybooks, and ledgers used by the church.
An 1855 receipt from Rural Hill Plantation promising payment of $50.12 due the next day.
Finally, DigitalNC also received folders of papers and documents about several Mecklenburg County plantations. Stretching from the 1820s to the 1860s, many of the folders contain financial records and receipts from Rural Hill, a plantation in Huntersville that was built in 1788 by Major John Davidson. There are also documents from his grandson, Adam Brevard Davidson, who later became a Trustee of Davidson College, and financial records, ledgers and booklets from the Mt. Tirzah Plantation in Lincoln County.
To browse through these materials, feel free to visit Davidson College’s partner page, or check out their website.
A selection of over 100 historic photos from Davidson College are now available on DigitalNC. The photos are from the Archives & Special Collections department at the Davidson College Library.
The images now online include a variety of campus scenes, shots of students, faculty, and campus buildings, and some great action shots of early 20th century sporting events.
Student yearbooks from Davidson College are now accessible through DigitalNC. Students, friends, and alumni can easily browse over 100 volumes of “Quips and Cranks” going as far back as 1895.
Thanks to our partners at the Davidson County Public Library, we have made available a new batch of materials from Churchland School, Lexington High School, and various churches in Davidson County. These include yearbooks from Churchland School and Davidson County Community College, which give researchers a glimpse of life in mid-century North Carolina and may include familiar faces! Additionally, we have added new issues of The Lexhipep, Lexington High School’s student newspaper, as well as one 1944 issue of an anti-alcohol newspaper titled To-Morrow.
Like in the previous batch, these scrapbooks focus on newspaper clippings from a variety of local papers that ran news about Mitchell. For example, in 1935, The Statesville Record ran a full page honoring the 26 graduates, which lists their names and photos in yearbook style. The accompanying article notes that Mary Logan King was awarded a “ten-dollar gold piece” for typing. Her typing speed was apparently 72 words per minute, which is still impressive by today’s standards—and then you remember she was doing it on a typewriter.
As a prequel to the praise of Mitchell’s traveling choir in 1939, there is also news of Davidson College’s glee club visiting to perform. According to the news bulletin accompanying the photo, “The Davidson College Glee club is well known all over the state and a large crowd is expected to attend the concert.” It sounds like the MCC choir had a little bit of musical competition.
Mascots are a complicated phenomenon. They inspire a spectrum of reactions: ridicule, ambivalence, or fierce loyalty. With thousands of yearbooks online, all of us here at the Digital Heritage Center have probably spent more time looking at yearbooks than anyone else you’re likely to meet. Mascots are a common theme.
I’ve been working on today’s post for quite some time; unable to find a history or comprehensive list of mascots in North Carolina I decided to compile one myself. So here’s a stab at a college mascot overview, drawn from yearbooks and other campus publications. Let me know what I’ve missed or gotten wrong!
Children
In the early 20th century, schools frequently chose children as mascots or sponsors, whether for a sports team or for a particular class. The earliest example we’ve found on DigitalNC is from a 1910 publication by Atlantic Christian College (now Barton College) in Wilson, which shows Elizabeth Settle Caldwell as the Senior Class sponsor.
Elizabeth Settle Caldwell, First North Carolina Mascot? From the 1910 Pine Knot yearbook, Atlantic Christian College.
Ms. Caldwell was the daughter of Jesse Cobb Caldwell, the college president. From what we’ve been able to tell, children mascots were frequently younger siblings of students, teachers, or others associated with the school. Students mention that Ms. Caldwell brought “solace to many a lonely, homesick heart” and this may be why children were chosen – to foster a feeling of family and comfort among students. We’ve seen several references to mascots being elected or being chosen through competition, although what this might be we haven’t been able to discover. The trend of choosing children as mascots seems to continue through the 1960s. The latest one we found is Dawn, the Senior Class mascot at Peace College (now William Peace University) in 1966.
Animals
Animal mascots span schools across the state, whether it’s Rameses at UNC-Chapel Hill or WCU’s Catamount. The bulldog and different types of cats win out as most frequently adopted. Pictures of live animal mascots start to appear in yearbooks in the early 1900s, and continue today although much less frequently. For a variety of reasons, including concerns expressed by animal rights activists, schools have shifted away from actual animals to students dressing up like animals, as you’ll see later on in this post.
“Buc” is described here as East Carolina University’s first mascot. From the 1959 Buccaneer yearbook.
Characters
While about half of the four-year college mascots in North Carolina are animals, most of the others are characters that are historic, mythical, or extraordinary in nature. From what I’ve seen in NC yearbooks, humans dressing up as the school mascot really got traction in the 1960s. Initially, these costumes weren’t the fuzzy creations we think of today, but rather less complicated ensembles where the mascot’s identity (his or her face and body) was often apparent. Yosef the Mountaineer, beloved icon of Appalachian State University, was created sometime around 1942 and looked like this in the 1960s:
Yosef the Mountaineer, aka James Randle Tedder (we think). From the 1969 Rhododendron yearbook, Appalachian State University.
One of my favorites has to be this picture of Duke Blue Devil, from 1950:
The Blue Devil. From the 1950 Chanticleer yearbook, Duke University.
Perhaps it was too hard to maintain a degree of consistency as students graduated over the years, and mascot anonymity seemed like a better idea. Whatever the reason, you start to see fuzzy, oversized costumes with gigantic headpieces in the late 1970s.
The Big Costumes
Whether animal or character, plush mascots that include a single piece body suit with a large plastic or cloth-covered head is something most Americans can identify with, thanks to professional sports. Colleges in North Carolina really embraced these costumes through the 1980s. Here’s what the UNC-Wilmington Seahawk looked like in 1987:
The Seahawk. From the 1987 Fledgling yearbook, UNC-Wilmington.
Some schools have developed multiple mascots dedicated to different audiences. It seems like the difficulty with these types of costumes is how to pull off a fierce facial expression that doesn’t come off as goofy or too scary for children. I think this picture from Davidson College sums it all up:
The Davidson Wildcat and … friends. From the 1983 Quips and Cranks yearbook.
I will also take this opportunity to mention a mascot that routinely makes the “wait … what?” list – the Campbell University Fighting Camels:
The Campbell Camel. From the 1983 Pine Burr yearbook.
Even the humans and human-like creatures are clothed in oversized costumes these days. Wake Forest University’s Deacon is a dapper chap:
Wake Forest’s Deacon poses with fans. From the 1985 Howler yearbook.
In addition to the Demon Deacons and the Blue Devils, North Carolina boasts a number of other spiritual mascots: North Carolina Wesleyan’s Battling Bishops, Belmont Abbey’s Crusaders, and Guilford College’s Quakers. Meredith College’s teams are known as the Avenging Angels (formerly just the Angels). While Elon University’s mascot is now the Phoenix, before 2000 they were the Fighting Christians:
The Elon Fighting Christian mascot with cheerleaders. From the 1986 Phi Psi Cli yearbook.
Two schools break with the animal/human tradition in North Carolina. The Brevard College Tornadoes and the Louisburg College Hurricanes. Weather phenomena mascots are always difficult to pull off. I couldn’t find one for Brevard, but Louisburg, which currently has a bird mascot, had “Louie” up until 2006:
Louie, the former Louisburg College Hurricanes mascot. From the 1996 The Oak yearbook.
Who knows when the next mascot sea change will happen. Below is a list of mascots in North Carolina; let us know if we got anything wrong. Which one is your favorite?
I’ve especially enjoyed reading the various rules and regulations laid out in these volumes. Most of them apply to female students, and seem to be aimed at thwarting “improper” behavior. Some of my favorites are below.
This photo shows the Davidson College football team in 1906, just 18 years after the first collegiate football game was played in North Carolina.
The action shot of a punter seems to be a popular subject for sports photographers. The photo at top is from the Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.); the one at bottom is from the Tufts Archives (Pinehurst, N.C.).
There are several good photos of high school football players and teams on DigitalNC. The top one here shows a player from Lansing High School in Ashe County; the one in the middle of the team from Davie County High School in 1961, and the photo at bottom shows the team from Waynesville Township High School in 1927.
These last three images above are shared by Ashe County Public Library (top), Davie County Public Library (middle), and Haywood County Public Library (bottom).
The romantic myth, first told by one of Peter Stewart Ney’s former students, says that Michel Ney escaped his own execution and fled to the United States, living out the rest of his days as the school teacher Peter Stewart Ney in North Carolina. The legend pulls in the life of the real Peter Stewart Ney, a teacher who happened to share the Marshal’s last name and who was an immigrant to South Carolina near the time of Michel Ney’s execution (though records suggest he was from Scotland rather than France). Peter Stewart Ney’s grave in Rowan county reads, “a native of France… and soldier of the French Revolution… under… Napoleon Bonaparte,” and his birth year is listed as 1769, the year Michel Ney was born. Though many storytellers have attempted to explain the ways that Michele Ney could have escaped and the similarities between the two men, historians have established that Peter Stewart Ney was not the Marshal.
Moose’s version tells how Michele Ney faked his own execution and was able to escape France by ship. Once in America, Moose theorizes that Ney could have connected with friends in Philadelphia. According to Moose, Michele Ney’s son, Eugène Michel Ney, was trained as a doctor in Philadelphia, and Peter Stewart Ney may have visited him. Moose also focuses on the oft-repeated story that Peter Stewart Ney allegedly attempted suicide when he heard of Napoleon’s death, though the source of that story is unclear.
The Ney myth runs so deeply in NC history that Peter Stewart Ney’s body was exhumed in 1887 and examined for evidence that he was the Marshal. In Moose’s telling, the lack of evidence found on the body (which was mostly decomposed) allowed the myth to continue.
Though he was not Napoleon’s lieutenant, Peter Stewart Ney did receive some acclaim as a teacher and scholar, according to Moose’s version. He developed a shorthand writing style and designed the seal and motto of Davidson College, Alenda Lux Ubi Orta Libertas. Sadly, not much is known about the early life of Peter Stewart Ney.
This blog is maintained by the staff of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center and features the latest news and highlights from the collections at DigitalNC, an online library of primary sources from organizations across North Carolina.
