Several scrapbooks from Granville County Public Library are now available on digitalnc.org. They are divided into three sets, all indexed by last name and organized by date:
- Families of Granville County – includes newspaper clippings featuring family members, event announcements, wedding and birth announcements, family histories, family trees, and miscellaneous items (such as postcards or Christmas cards)
- Marriages, vol. I-II – includes newspaper clippings, wedding invitations, and wedding programs
- Oxford and Granville Men and Women includes newspaper clippings featuring the individual residents, life event announcements, letters, and images
These scrapbooks belong to the larger Hays Collection, a many volume collection of Oxford and Granville County histories created by Francis B. Hays over the course of more than 75 years.
The last several pages of Oxford and Granville Men and Women, vol. 7 feature articles about Mr. Hays. Written in 1958, when Mr. Hays was 91 years old, these articles explain his process and philosophy behind gathering all of this information and organizing it into these volumes, and discuss — among other things — Mr. Hays’ love for chess, his past as an editor and druggist, and his history of helping school children and “Granville’s migrants” in history projects and genealogical inquiries. In addition to these articles is an article by Mr. Hays called “It was News in 1911.”
These materials are part of an ongoing digitization project. More volumes to come!