Twenty new diaries belonging to Mrs. Mary Kelly Watson Smith (c. 1831-1924) are now available in conjunction with Greensboro History Museum. Mrs. Smith was married to Reverend Jacob Henry Smith (1820-1897), the pastor of Greensboro’s First Presbyterian Church for over forty years. The couple were married in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1857 before moving to Greensboro two years later. Mrs. Smith eventually had nine children, seven of whom lived into adulthood. The Smith family were active secessionists and supported the Confederacy during the Civil War. Her diaries reflect the experience and perspective of a matriarch at the time, recording Mrs. Smith’s involvement in church services, rotary clubs, and memorials for both O. Henry and Confederate soldiers.

These diaries record the last decade of Mary Smith’s life, from 1911 to her falling ill in 1923. They detail the sinking of the Titanic, Greensboro’s “building boom,” and the entirety of the first world war. Mary Smith includes various newspaper clippings (both national and local) alongside clippings from sermon books and hymnals.

Mary Smith’s diaries provide an essential insight into Greensboro’s political, social, and religious spheres during a period of great upheaval. Anyone interested in Greensboro, the First Presbyterian Church, or the beginning of the 20th century is sure to find these diaries interesting. You can read the new diaries on our website here. When you’re done with that, read more about Mary Kelly Watson Smith on the Greensboro History Museum’s website and view other materials from the museum here.

Digital NC has uploaded a new batch of minutes from the Board of Trustees of Sandhills Community College in Pinehurst, North Carolina. Researchers can use these records see the changes in administrative policy over time. This latest addition covers 2002-2015, significantly updating our existing collection of Sandhills minutes. See previously digitized records, spanning 1963-1996, here.

To view more materials from our partner Sandhills Community College, visit their partner page.

Digital NC has made available new materials from the First Presbyterian Church of Mount Holly. A long-standing institution in Gaston County, the First Presbyterian Church of Mount Holly has a wealth of records for genealogists and other researchers. These latest uploads span over one hundred years and add significantly to our pre-existing Mount Holly First Presbyterian collection.

This addition includes a batch of minute books covering the years 1887-1954 and weekly bulletins from 1976-1998. Minute books include registers of communicants, baptisms, marriages, and deaths. Bulletins provide an in-depth account of church activities and the staff, teachers, and congregants involved in them. Researchers can view the entirety of our Mount Holly First Presbyterian digital exhibit here and all of our North Carolina Community Contributors collections here.

North Carolina is renowned for its high-quality furniture production, and the Piedmont city of High Point specifically is known as the “Furniture Capital of the World.” This moniker was earned during the late-nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries, when the furniture industry was at its “high point.” Thanks to our partners at the High Point Museum, new materials now available on Digital NC give unique insight into this storied history with catalogs, Chamber of Commerce pamphlets, directories, and more. These documents roughly span the first half of the twentieth century, and provide a great deal of information on the prominent figures and companies in North Carolina’s furniture industry. Researchers can also visit High Point Museum’s Online Collections here to see more.

Thanks to our newest partner, Greene County Public Library, a new batch of materials is now available on DigitalNC! The Greene County Public Library, located in Snow Hill, North Carolina, is one of eight libraries in the Neuse Regional Library System. The materials in this batch include the only known volume of estate papers for Greene County prior to the 1870s, 1850 Greene County census, and a North Carolina Agricultural Station bulletin that provides a look into 1940s medical care.

In February 1877, a legislative act was passed that, among other things, created the North Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station. This act directed the station to conduct research on plant nutrition and grown, discover which fertilizers were best for each crop, and conduct other needed agricultural investigations. Nearly two months after the act was passed, the first station in the state, as well as in the South, began its work in a one-room chemistry laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Eventually the management of the station was transferred to the institution that would become North Carolina State University (NCSU); however, the North Carolina Department of Agriculture (NCDA) continued to maintain its relationship with the station. Over time, a total of 15 Agricultural Experiment Stations were opened across the state. Today, the stations are cooperatively operated by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and North Carolina State University.

In November 1948, the Agricultural Experiment Station at North Carolina State College (eventually NCSU) published bulletin no. 363, titled “Medical Care in Greene County.” The bulletin provides a fascinating look into 1940s medical care in the county for both its white and Black residents. In addition to population demographic information, the bulletin provides a breakdown of the county’s medical facilities, medical workers, how far people traveled to receive care, how long patients stayed, who went to these facilities and why, cost for care, how patients paid their bills, and if any had insurance. Based on this information, the North Carolina Agricultural Station includes suggestions in the bulletin for the county’s medical care moving forward.

To learn more about Greene County Public Library, visit their website linked here.

To browse materials related to Greene County, visit our Greene County page linked here.

To view materials from Neuse Regional Libraries, visit their contributor page linked here.

Information about the Agricultural Experiment Station(s) were gathered from an NCpedia entry linked here.