Thanks to our partners at Campbell University, you can now explore Buie’s Creek High School yearbooks on DigitalNC’s website. This batch has materials from 1948- 1977, that’s almost thirty years worth of memories. These high school yearbooks are a great way to see what school was like for students in Harnett County. Yearbooks are popular because of they contain so many photographs, and have a level of organization and labeling that is helpful in identifying folks. Not to mention, flipping through an old yearbook is nostalgic.
This particular batch of yearbooks includes handwritten commentary in the margins and on the pages. The note scribbled in the margins shows the beloved annual yearbook signing tradition. Flipping through the pages and finding a picture that take you back to the good times spent with peers, and making sure all your friends and teachers left a remark to remember them.
The blank pages in the back of the yearbook is known to be dedicated for signatures. This is a crucial element of the yearbook signing tradition. Signees always sure to give their best signatures. Do you recognize any of these signatures?
To learn more about The Henderson County Education History Initiative, please visit their website linked here.
Constructed in 1918, the Fuquay Consolidated School was one of the first schools to benefit from the Rosenwald Foundation and one of over 800 Rosenwald schools in the state. The following year, in 1919, the school opened its doors to students. A high school department was added in the 1930s, however, it wasn’t until 1952 that the high school building was added to the property. Interestingly, the school did not hold a graduation in 1942 because the senior class of that year elected to return the following year for the newly added 12th grade.
The 1950s were a period of growth and change for the school with a total of 34 faculty members, 11 new buses, modernization of the home economics department, installation of water fountains, new high school building, and the addition of commercial education and a marching band. Eventually grades one through six were moved in 1964 to the newly constructed elementary school, Lincoln Heights Elementary, while grades seven through 12 remained at Fuquay Consolidated High School. The school remained in operation until 1970. Today, the school buildings have been repurposed by the Fuquay-Varina Community Development Corporation (FVCDC) into a childhood learning center and apartments for individuals 55+.
To learn more about and see more materials from North Carolina Community Contributors, visit their contributor page here.
Information about the former Fuquay Consolidated School campus was gathered from the FVCDC, an organization created in 1991 by graduates of Fuquay Consolidated High School and members of the community. To learn more about the FVCDC, visit their website by clicking the link here.
The Home Economics classes at Chatham Central High School offered students instruction and experience in sewing, planning menus and budgets, first aid, child care, and cooking. However, for those interested in learning more about and gaining more experience in cooking, the school offered a food service class. This class provided refreshments for club activities along with catering in the community. And according to The Centralia [1973] Chatham Central’s food service class gained a positive reputation among students and the public for their catered confectioneries!
To learn more about Chatham County Public Libraries, visit their website here.
Lee County Public Libraries has shared a large collection of materials relating to Sanford, Jonesboro, and the greater Lee County area, now available on Digital NC. Here at NCDHC, we are thrilled to work with a new partner and broaden our representation of “the heart of North Carolina.” Visitors to the site can now view nearly one hundred years of documents, including bulletins and directories; county fair and circus programs; personal records; Chamber of Commerce pamphlets; many photographs of residents, homes, and businesses; scrapbooks; school programs, records, and yearbooks; and more. Also available are forty-four years of minutes from the Pierian Club, a women’s club and Sanford’s oldest literary society. Records from these societies, common in the twentieth century, give unique insight into the activities of middle-class North Carolina women.
Sanford has historically been an important site for manufacturing and industry, and was established at the junction of the Raleigh and Augusta Air Line and Western Railroads. The early twentieth century saw rapid expansion, thanks to Sanford’s location on the railways and its official incorporation as a city in 1907, as well as the growth of manufacturing throughout the Piedmont. Tobacco in particular contributed to Sanford’s growth, which is reflected in many of the photographs and documents now available on the site. Many of the newly digitized materials are concerned with attracting more business to Sanford and advertising its various commercial enterprises. Sanford suffered economic downturns in the Great Depression and again in the 1960s and ’70s as tobacco and manufacturing declined.
Thanks to investment in economic diversification at the end of the twentieth century, Sanford has again become a vibrant and growing community with many manufacturing jobs and a diverse population of over 60,000 residents. Researchers can learn more about Lee County here and view all of our digitized materials from Lee County Public Libraries here.
Here we have materials spanning three decades from our partners over at the Granville County Public Library! These additions include issues of the Oxford Public Ledger, a student paper from Henderson High School, and yearbooks from Henderson and Dabney, N.C.!
Thanks to a thoughtful community member, we’ve recently digitized our first yearbook from the small Catholic school St. Genevieve-of-the-Pines, once located in Asheville, N.C. This yearbook, which was recovered from an estate, shows the close-knit students at the all-women’s school in 1942.
According to Carolina Day School’s history page (which apparently absorbed the school in the 1980s), St. Genevieve-of-the-Pines was originally formed by French nuns in 1908 (Genevieve is the patroness saint of Paris in the Catholic tradition). It morphed over the next few decades into a women’s junior college, then two separate schools for boys and girls (St. Genevieve’s Prep and Gibbons Hall), then again into the combined St. Genevieve-Gibbons Hall School. This yearbook is from the Junior College of St. Genevieve-of-the-Pines. Today, one of the few remaining landmarks of St. Genevieve’s is the grotto, which was transferred to Carolina Day School’s campus in 2008.
Since there are so many yearbooks in this batch, there is a wide assortment of creative yearbook titles—some of which are stronger than others. As an alumna of R.J. Reynolds High School, I’ll admit that I have some bias toward the Black and Gold, but even I have to acknowledge that it’s a pretty generic name (in this batch alone, we’ve also got The Maroon and Gold from Atkins, the Blue and White from Old Town High School, and the Blue and Gold from Griffith High School).
Rather than opt for the usual school colors-based title, here are the top five yearbooks that aimed for something a little different.
I like that this team of young yearbook editors took a philosophical approach to their title. Like looking through a keyhole, a yearbook can only give a limited picture of what the culture and experience of Rural Hall High School was like. They continue this slice-of-life theme on the inside of the yearbook as well with this comical drawing featuring some of their classmates.
There’s something so quintessentially high school about being assigned The Iliad, possibly reading it, and then using it as a metaphor for the obstacles you face (a move perhaps only topped by a comparison of your personal journey to The Odyssey). This literary homage is made even better by the fact that the mascot for Southwest was the Trojan, meaning that this yearbook likely describes the siege and fall of the school by means of wooden horse.
Third place on this not-at-all subjective list was initially selected because of its overlap with the editorial column of James Mackintosh Qwilleran, a fictional detective and journalist who writes “The Qwill Pen” in the mystery series The Cat Who… by Lilian Jackson Braun. However, based on the uniforms required for yearbook photos, it does also seem possible that the students of Salem Academy really were writing with quills.
As someone with no military experience, when I initially picked this title, I had a different mental image of what the “dress parade” might include. However, given the fact that students at Oak Ridge did have to wear their uniforms on display for the yearbook, it still seems like a really fitting title. Plus, this edition has some cool woodblock prints and this one inexplicably tiny photo of a gazebo.
I don’t even know where to begin with this absolute chef’s kiss of a yearbook title. I love the old-timey spelling. I love the idea that a yearbook is the modern equivalent of a person who yells out the town news. I love the font choice and the inclusion of “Ye.”
Old Town High School experimented with a couple of names before this (see Blue and White and The Log), suggesting that it might take a few tries before you can land on the perfect name. The icing on the cake is that every time I read it, I can hear the opening notes of Lil Nas X’s 2019 hit “Old Town Road” in my mind. (Sadly, Old Town High School was not located on Old Town Road, though such a road does exist in Winston-Salem).
Though this batch of yearbooks covers so many different eras of high school throughout the 20th century, one consistent element among several editions is a focus on uniforms. The 1970 edition of The Falcon, for example, shows a representative from the school’s various teams showing off their athletic uniforms. This 1970 cheerleading uniform is a bit of a departure from the cheerleading uniforms of the 1950s, as evidenced by this squad from Mills River High (though the dance teams’ preference for shiny uniforms seems to be evergreen).
One thing that many of the Burke county yearbooks have in common is a shared admiration for animal mascots. In addition to the adorable tiger seen on the 1956 edition of the Impersonator from Valdese High School, you can’t overlook the endearing little guy on the front of the 1965 Calvacade from Drexel High School. (Though you may think he is a funny bear or perhaps a fox, further investigation reveals he is, in fact, a wolverine.) This set also includes a fighting eagle, a turkey, wildcats, bulldogs, and one fancy horse giving a knight a lift.
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.
