Abhego Atkinson Family Reunion, Beulah Township, 1912

Spicy Elizabeth Hayes Barefoot (1862-1931)

This December the Digital Heritage Center team took a field trip to Johnston County Heritage Center in Smithfield, North Carolina to do a session of on-location scanning. The Heritage Center is the former home office of First Citizens Bank in downtown Smithfield and includes exhibit space as well as storage for historic artifacts and records pertaining to Johnston County history. Armed with two flatbed scanners, laptops, external hard drives, and an armful of cords and cables, team members set to work scanning and filling out metadata for over 200 photographs that are now available on DigitalNC.

These photographs are part of Johnston county’s portrait collection depicting individuals from Johnston County and beyond. Many of the portraits from the session included labels detailing names, dates, and locations describing the photo. This information was recorded on-site during the scanning process, and makes for a useful set of images for those interested in genealogy or more broadly in Johnston County history. The number of well-labeled group family portraits in this collection make it great for tracing family history, and the Digital Heritage team enjoyed tracking individuals across different times and settings as we scanned.

Reverend Jesse and Susanna Watkins Wheeler

To learn more about on-location scanning, take a look at our previous blogpost detailing the initiative. To learn more about our partner Johnston County Heritage Center, and to see more of their materials, take a look at their DigitalNC partner page or check out their website.