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New Additions to Rockingham County Legacy Exhibit Incude Garden Club Yearbooks, Scrapbooks, and More

The cover of Bicentennial: North Carolina History Volume 1

The Stoneville Garden Club song printed in the 1952-1953 garden club yearbook

The newest batch of materials from our partner Rockingham County Public Library includes 3 scrapbooks, over 20 garden club yearbooks, 3 school yearbooks, and more. The scrapbooks are comprised of news clippings pertaining to the National Bicentennial Celebration of North Carolina Independence that took place from 1975-1976. Each volume collects articles chronologically in the order that they were published.

The garden club yearbooks document the Stoneville Garden Club from 1937-1999. These yearbooks feature lists of the year’s officers, committees, programs, and the club’s constitution. The yearbooks also feature the club’s song which starts “Plant a Shrub, a Flower, a Tree!” and decorative covers in the club’s colors–pink and green.

The cover of the 1937 club yearbook

Also included in this batch are the 1939 and  1940 editions of The Pilot by Leaksville High School and the 1944 edition of The Crest by Draper High School.

To see all of the materials in the Rockingham County Legacy exhibit, visit the exhibit’s homepage. To learn more about Rockingham County Public Library visit their partner page or take a look at their website.


New Memorabilia, Assorted Records added to the Rockingham County Legacy Digital Exhibit

Madison-Mayodan Charm Bracelet

Madison-Mayodan Charm Bracelet

A new batch of materials from Rockingham County Public Library is now available on DigitalNC!

This batch includes several 3-dimensional, physical objects, which are always interesting to digitize. DigitalNC has digitized everything from full size quilts to wedding dresses, but not everything requires that much work. Rockingham County Public Library’s pins, brooches, hair barrette, and charm bracelet are small enough to scan using the same workflow as larger scrapbooks and newspapers (see the documentation about our Phase One Camera), which are more common on the site. To see examples of larger items that must be shot in a studio, follow this link.

Brownie Scout Hair Barrette

Brownie Scout Hair Barrette

North Carolina Tar Heel Girl State Pin

North Carolina Tar Heel Girl State Pin

In addition to the physical objects, this batch also includes several other items that may be of interest to researchers or genealogists. The Speedwell Presbyterian Churchyard Graves booklet documents the names and locations of all of those buried in the historic cemetery between 1739-1969. The Stoneville Patron Registration books records the names and locations of those who used this branch library between 1959 and 1982.

See the lists below for all of the material digitized in this batch.

Physical Objects:

Booklets:

Other Digitized Memorabilia:

These items and more than 1500 more are all available at the digital exhibit, Rockingham County Legacy: A Digital Heritage Project. To learn more about Rockingham County Public Library and to see even more interesting Memorabilia, visit the contributor page or the website. To see more digitized physical objects available on DigitalNC, please use the following link.


The Evolution of the Rockingham County Bookmobile

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Photo from the McRae Public Library Scrapbook, page 13

The latest batch of items from the Rockingham County Public Library contains several scrapbooks that document the history of several branch libraries in the county. A highlight from this group is the General Publicity scrapbook, which documents a history of activism for libraries in both Rockingham County and around the state– especially through bookmobiles.

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The first bookmobile in Rockingham County, General Publicity, page 14

The first bookmobile came to North Carolina in 1936 to serve the largely rural population that had little access to library services within their communities. At the time, the North Carolina Library Association (NCLA) and the Citizens’ Library Movement estimated that more than 1 million people in NC had no access to libraries. NCLA combated this problem by purchasing the state’s first book truck. The truck traveled around to rural counties in the state, demonstrating how small, local libraries could better serve their populations. This idea quickly caught on in Rockingham County and a community member donated a bookmobile to the county in 1937 (pictured above).

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The second bookmobile in Rockingham County, General Publicity Scrapbook, page 15

The new bookmobile was widely successful, making 106 stops weekly around the county. It ran as the soul “locomotive library” for more than a decade before it was replaced by another, more unusual edition in 1949. The second book truck (pictured at left) featured machine-powered shelves that extended several feet behind the truck, which allowed space for more than 1200 volumes of books. This was more than double the amount of the previous truck.

The popularity of the bookmobile grew so rapidly that the county added a second bookmobile to the fleet in 1953. The newest model was a refurbished delivery truck that was as large as a “room on wheels.” The new, larger bookmobile (pictured below) allowed for the library to better serve rural patrons, no matter the weather, which had been a problem for the previous model. The older bookmobile went on to serve the McRae Libraries in Rockingham County, which served the African American community (featured photo at the top of the page), providing access to a previously under-served population in the county. The McRae Library scrapbook also offers a look into the vibrant history of library services for the Black community in Rockingham County. If you are interested in learning more about the Rockingham County Bookmobile, check out this unique film from 1939. It demonstrates the first bookmobile in action!

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The third bookmobile in Rockingham County, General Publicity scrapbook, page 16

In addition to the scrapbooks containing information about the bookmobiles, this batch also includes several informational booklets about various textile mills in the county, various memorabilia items, and historical information about the area from the early nineteenth century.

You can see several of the other highlights from this batch below:

To learn more about the Rockingham County Public Library and its branches, please the website. To see more items from the library on DigitalNC, please visit their contributor page.


Birthdays, Community Accomplishments Featured in New Additions to Rockingham County Legacy Project

5 Scrapbooks, several fliers, a local mill’s employee newspaper, and an assortment of news clippings from the Rockingham County Public Library are the latest additions to the collaborative Rockingham County Legacy project.

Birthdays were a pervasive theme among some of DigitalNC’s new additions from the Rockingham County Public Library. The Welcome to Madison Rockingham County – Wagon Train Scrapbook documents the festivities for the town’s 150th Birthday, including parades, dances, and competitions. Perhaps one of the more interesting competitions was the “Beards of the Week,” featured in the back pages of the scrapbook. Sesquicentennial activities had Madison reliving earlier days, as the clippings demonstrate costumes from several different decades. The most popular period covered in the scrapbook appears to be the early 19th century, with men, women, and children all looking the part in articles from the Madison Messenger. The Madison Sesquicentennial Celebration [1968] folder also features fliers, brochures, and order forms for the different events during the celebration. However, the town of Madison was not the only community celebrating. The congregation of Bethel A.M.E. Church, Reidsville, N.C. documented their Centennial Celebration with a booklet, as well. Speedwell Presbyterian Church and Some Rockingham County Churches are sets of newspaper clippings that document several other churches’ birthdays, anniversaries, and moments.

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Madison Public Library, Page 42

The Madison Public Library Scrapbook documents the successes and trials of several library branches in Rockingham County during the 1950’s. While Madison Public Library experienced growth, both in the collection and in numbers of users, it also faced budgetary and resources constraints.

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Rockingham County People Vol. I, Page 34.

Rockingham County People, Volumes I-III, could serve as an interesting research tool to those seeking genealogical research about members of the Rockingham County community. The scrapbooks, sorted alphabetically, feature profiles of people who once resided in the county. Some profiles document the daily lives of everyone from church leaders to stay-at-home mothers, while others highlight the interesting and important accomplishments of people that represent the county. One such example is the story of newspaper editor, Horace Carter, who waged a print war against the Ku Klux Klan during the 1950’s. Carter attacked the Klan through his paper and aided the FBI and SBI in undercover work. He eventually won several awards including the Pulitzer Prize.

To see any of the items featured here in full, along with the entire collection, visit the Rockingham County Legacy exhibit page. For more information about the Rockingham County Public Library and their materials, visit their contributor page on DigitalNC or their website.

 

 

 


History of Rockingham County Families, Baseball, and More Published Online

From the booklet celebrating the 150th year of Madison, NC.

From the booklet celebrating the 150th year of Madison, NC.

The Digital Heritage Center just finished digitizing a large batch of materials from Rockingham County Public Library as part of the collaborative Rockingham County Legacy project, which gathers materials from various contributors relating to the history and heritage of the county.

Chief among the items are local and family histories. One volume, entitled Roots and Branches, contains research from the Genealogical Society of Rockingham & Stokes Counties on various families in the region. However, the majority of the research was conducted and collated by local historian John T. Dallas.

Several new family histories have been added as well. The Alcorn/Alcon, Blair, Dallas, Downs, Gates, Grubb and Settle, Jarrell, Stephens, Thomas, and White families all have newly published volumes containing a profusion of Rockingham/Stokes county genealogical research.

Numerous advertisers dressed up in historic clothing to celebrate Madison's long history.

Numerous advertisers dressed up in historic clothing to celebrate Madison’s long history.

Several town and other regional histories have also been published: Smithtown, Draper, Leaksville, Spray, the Mont View/Galloway Farm, and Sugartree Primitive Baptist Church in Virginia, which also contains information on the Dallas family and Wesley Chapel Church. Additionally, there is a Rockingham County employee directory from 1960, a book of employees of Marshall Field and Company Manufacturing Division who served in World War II, and the fifth volume of the history of Wentworth High School series. The booklet celebrating the 1968 sesquicentennial celebration of the town of Madison (pictured above) showcases the rich history of the town and includes many excellent historic photographs.

There is also a booklet on the history of the Saura, a small Siouan tribe who lived in the Rockingham and Stokes counties area. The booklet was written as an introduction to the Native American tribe for students in Rockingham county schools. The volume, though slightly dated, is nevertheless a useful resource for both the history of the tribe and as a record of how the history of Native people was taught to students in that time. The tribe itself is no longer extant but persists at least in name in the Sauratown mountains of Stokes county; the range includes the popular destinations Pilot Mountain and Hanging Rock State Park. For more information about the Saura, also known as the Cheraw, visit the NCpedia page.

Lastly, baseball! John Dallas compiled a two-volume history of Reidsville, NC’s short-lived minor league baseball team, the Luckies. They are also mentioned in the Sugartree Church volume, linked above.

To explore more items from the Rockingham County Legacy project, please see the exhibit page.


Local Histories from Rockingham County Now Online

American Tobacco Company plant in Reidsville NC

Postcard showing The American Tobacco Company cigarette plant in Reidsville, North Carolina.

We’ve recently finished digitizing and publishing online more local history materials from Rockingham County Public Library. This is another batch coordinated as part of a 2014-2015 Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) EZ Digitzation Grant, and we’re excited to share these with you.

Periodicals added with this batch include Insights to Jerusalem, a newsletter published by the Jerusalem United Holy Church of America in Reidsville, NC. These volumes, from 1990-1994, include church news, recipes, short essays, and more.  Old Rockingham County Magazine, also published during the 1990s, is a variety magazine with stories, historical anecdotes, household hints, ads, and local lore.

There are also a number of additional volumes of research on a variety of Rockingham County residents and topics by local historian John T. Dallas.

The remaining items include materials about the American Tobacco Company (The Story of Lucky Strike, and a postcard of the plant in Reidsville), two reports on civil rights in Reidsville, and a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings and ephemera documenting Washington Mills.


Rockingham County Bookmobile Film Now Available Online

bookmobile

We are very excited to share a new addition to the DigitalNC collections: video! Over the winter we began work on a new effort to digitize a selection of audiovisual materials from around the state. We gathered a wide variety of films, videotapes, and audio cassettes from some of our partner libraries and worked with a vendor to have everything digitized. The results are starting to come in, and they’re a lot of fun.

In honor of National Library Week, and in special recognition of National Bookmobile Day, we are sharing our first film: a terrific recording of the Rockingham County bookmobile visiting a local school in 1939. The film enables us to take a glimpse into the past as we watch a pretty fancy looking bookmobile pull up to the school, some earnest and well-dressed librarians getting ready for the kids, and then we can see the excitement of the children as they browse and pick out books from the mobile shelves. And of course, there’s Jim the library dog, who liked to ride on the front seat and was a fixture at every bookmobile visit.

The film is from the Rockingham County Public Library, which has also contributed a great selection of photographs of the bookmobile in action. Digitization was made possible by a grant from the Knight Foundation through the Digital Public Library of America. Look for more moving images and audio recordings coming to DigitalNC very soon.


New Materials Added to Rockingham County Legacy Project

Rockingham County Drop in Library Scrapbook photo, 1977-1978We’ve just added scrapbooks, a town ledger, and several additional yearbooks from Rockingham County Public Library, part of the collaborative Rockingham County Legacy project.

Two Rockingham County Library programs from the 1970s are documented in these digitized scrapbooks. The Drop-in-Library (DIL) was a grant-funded initiative to bring resources, especially audio-visual ones, to children who couldn’t get to a physical library branch. The DIL van “dropped in” to residential areas, head start programs, day cares, schools, and other parts of the community, where staff would present filmstrips, read books, and provide the children with a variety of activities. The scrapbooks include newspaper articles, promotional materials, and documentation about the program, as well as photographs showing children taking advantage of the DILmobile’s resources. The Special Outreach Services (SOS) program similarly offered services to those who had trouble getting to a branch. This service delivered large print books and other materials via station wagon to the homebound.

This most recent batch also includes a Property Tax Register from the town of Madison, as well as more yearbooks for Booker T. Washington High School, John Motley Morehead High School, and Stoneville High School. There are now over 120 yearbooks from Rockingham County institutions available on DigitalNC.


Obituaries, DAR Records and More from Rockingham County now Online

North Carolina Public School Register, Rockingham County

Example page from the Public School Register, showing list of students in attendance as well as general school information at the top.

We’ve just added a mixture of items from Rockingham County Public Library to DigitalNC. Of interest to genealogists will be an early public school register that lists students from 1891-1897, along with the names of their parents/guardians. At the top of each two-page spread is a list of textbooks used by the class, and the school teacher’s salary (usually around $22.00).

We’re also excited about providing full-text searchability to seven volumes of obituaries clipped from the Madison Messenger as well as other newspapers. See links to these items below.

Finally, this batch includes a number of ledgers documenting activity at Rockingham libraries, and records of a local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

These items are all a part of the Rockingham County Legacy Project, which brings together resources from several institutions in that county.


Rockingham County High School Yearbooks Now Available Online

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Early high school yearbooks from Rockingham County are now available on DigitalNC. The Rockingham County Public Library contributed 20 yearbooks from its local history collections to be digitized. The yearbooks range in date from 1935-1963 and represent several different schools, including:


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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.

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