This 1899 photo is one of over 100 images from the Elizabeth City State University Archives now available on DigitalNC.org. The University was founded in 1891 to serve as a training school for African American teachers. In the photo shown here, students are gathered around a wood stove to keep warm in one of the rented rooms used for instruction while the permanent buildings were under construction.
The photos collected online document the rich history of Elizabeth City State, from the early days when it was known as the State Normal School through its becoming a member of the University of North Carolina system in 1972.
We’ve just added newspaper issues from 37 titles, dating from 1819-1968, with the majority dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. From a variety of cities, most of these additions are only 1-5 issues per title. Thanks to the State Archives of North Carolina and its preservation of newspapers, we’re pleased to include these fill-in issues. The State Archives provided them to us as part of their newspaper microfilming workflow.
Below is a list of titles, their cities of publication, and the years from which the issues date.
The State Archives has an exhibit of Early North Carolina Newspapers here. Their microfilming efforts are behind almost all of the digitized microfilmed papers available through DigitalNC. Search or browse all of our newspapers on the newspaper landing page.
This week we have another 61 titles up on DigitalNC, including our first additions from Charleston, Culler, Red Springs, Rutherfordton, and Sanford! Included in this batch, on the front page of the February 28, 1872 issue of Raleigh’s Weekly Sentinel, is an article detailing the final heist of Robeson County folk hero Henry Berry Lowry.
Portrait thought to be of Henry Berry Lowry. Via the State Archives of North Carolina
Henry Berry Lowry, a Lumbee Native American, was the head of the mostly Native outlaw group known as the Lowry Gang. In addition to typical outlaw activities, the Lowry Gang also helped other Native Americans avoid Confederate work conscription and fought alongside Union soldiers who had escaped Confederate prison camps. While Lowry did often resort to murder to settle personal feuds, he was also considered a sort of Robeson “Robin Hood.” When they committed robberies, they would often share the spoils with the community and would return items such as horses as soon as they were no longer needed. They were known to be “respectful” robbers and would let you off the hook if you could show you didn’t have much.
The Weekly Sentinel, February 28, 1872
In 1869, governor William Holden put a $12,000 bounty on Lowry’s head, which resulted in bloody conflict over the next few years. After successfully evading capture, Lowry planned his final heist in February of 1872. The gang stole a safe from a local carriage manufacturer and were bold enough to take another from the sheriff’s office, walking away with $22,000 (about $520,000 today) and then he disappeared. The bounty was never collected and he was never heard from again. Some locals claim they saw him at a friend’s funeral years later, but we will likely never know what happened to Henry Berry Lowry.
Over the next year, we’ll be adding millions of newspaper images to DigitalNC. These images were originally digitized a number of years ago in a partnership with Newspapers.com. That project focused on scanning microfilmed papers published before 1923 held by the North Carolina Collection in Wilson Special Collections Library. While you can currently search all of those pre-1923 issues on Newspapers.com, over the next year we will also make them available in our newspaper database as well. This will allow you to search that content alongside the 2 million pages already on our site – all completely open access and free to use.
If you want to see all of the newspapers we have available on DigitalNC, you can find them here. Thanks to UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries for permission to and support for adding all of this content as well as the content to come. We also thank the North Caroliniana Society for providing funding to support staff working on this project.
Today’s post announces the addition of 9 issues of Bladen County newspapers. Much of our newspaper digitization relies on newspapers microfilmed by the State Archives of North Carolina, which has a long history of preserving the state’s papers in film format. To date, only 9 Bladen County issues have been filmed, and we’re pleased to add them to the site on behalf of the Bladen County Public Library.
Bladen County is located in the southeastern part of the state. It’s county seat is Elizabethtown. The newspaper additions are as follows:
This paragraph from the May 26, 1899 issue of The Cape Fear Lance states that you could get a newspaper subscription in trade for “anything it can handle.”
A partial view of a list of ordinances for the city of Lawndale, NC, enacted in 1907.
Today we’re pleased to share a new batch of materials from the Lawndale Historical Society, located in Cleveland County North Carolina. Included are a variety of business records and ephemera related to the Cleveland Mill and Power Company, a hotel register, some town government records, and early twentieth century yearbooks/catalogs from Piedmont High School.
The Cleveland Mill and Power Company was founded around 1873 in Lawndale. The records in this most recent batch include the following:
Clipping from an article written by John F. Schenck entitled “The Menace of Washington to American Industry,” published in a 1936 issue of Carolina Magazine.
John F. Schenck Sr. ran the Cleveland Mill and Power Company, was Mayor of Lawndale, and an all around influential white figure in the community. Textiles were in his blood, so to speak. His great-grandfather and grandfather both founded cotton mills. The scrapbook in this most recent batch is part diary and part manifesto – it contains many typewritten pages of his personal views on the current state of the textile industry, particularly in relation to what he saw as overreaching government regulations from the time period before, during, and after the U. S. Great Depression. There are also clippings and other ephemera.
There are a few other volumes related to town history from the same time period. The Lawndale Hotel Register has signatures dated from 1901-1910. The hotel guest’s place of origin is also included. The Town of Lawndale Minutes and Records from 1903-1925 includes town council minutes, election results, and copies of ordinances like the one at right.
There are also early volumes from Piedmont High School, dating 1905-1926. They’re a bit of a hybrid between catalogs and yearbooks, like many schools published in that time period, and they show both information about the classes offered and the students who attended.
The Piedmont High School Emersonian Literary Society, pictured in the 1925-1926 catalog.
You can view other items related to Lawndale and the Cleveland Mill on the Lawndale Historical Society’s contributor page. These materials have been shared in part thanks to a partnership with the State Archives of North Carolina sponsored by the State Historical Records Advisory Board.
Company H, WWI, 1st North Carolina Infantry of the National Guard, departed Waynesville’s train depot on June 26, 1916. They guarded the Mexican border and returned to Waynesville in February 1917. In July 1917 they then were sent to France during WWI. Courtesy of Haywood County Public Library.
Last Thursday, April 6, 2017, marked the 100th anniversary of the United States’ entry into World War I. Over the next year, many cultural heritage institutions around the country are highlighting the materials they hold related to the “Great War.” We wanted to highlight some of the fantastic local North Carolina materials we have digitized for our partners that document the World War I perspective from North Carolinians’ eyes.
Severalscrapbooks from Elon University detail the students’ view of the war as well as what college life during World War I looked like here in North Carolina.
Headline from Page 2 of the April 12, 1917 edition of the Roanoke News
The richest source of information on World War I and North Carolina on DigitalNC may very well be the many local newspapers we’ve digitized that contain the local perspective on the war, including some quite subdued headlines announcing the US’s entry. DigitalNC also hosts several World War I camp and hospital newspapers including the Trench and Camp from Camp Greene and the Caduceus, the paper of the Base Hospital at Camp Greene. Both are from Charlotte Mecklenburg Library.
To view more materials from World War I, check out a search of our collections here. And to learn more about World War I materials from across the state, visit the institutions highlighted in this blog post from our colleagues over at the State Archives of North Carolina.
Over time, we have worked with the State Archives of North Carolina, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library, and UNC-Chapel Hill to digitize a number of North Carolina Film Board films. Created by Gov. Terry Sanford, the Film Board operated for a short time during the 1960s and produced films of statewide significance. Many of the films dealt with the changing nature of the state at that time, discussing social equality, poverty, demographics, environmental concerns, and more.
Recently, we added several more films, held by UNC-Chapel Hill’s North Carolina Collection, and listed below. DigitalNC now hosts 14 of the 19 films created by the Film Board.*
The Piedmont Crescent (1968) Shows the population and industrial changes in the Piedmont.
Why We Kill (1965) Candid discussion with five men who have broken the law while driving.
This last film, Why We Kill, is and will likely remain one of the most riveting items in our collection. During this film, actor Chris Connelly, himself guilty of multiple driving infractions, sits down with five North Carolinians who caused fatalities or have had multiple run-ins with the law while speeding and/or driving under the influence of alcohol. It’s a frank discussion that is alternatively saddening and mystifying, as various levels of remorse come through. While watching, there are moments during which it’s striking how driving habits and social trends have changed over time, especially when the men discuss how much alcohol contributes to impairment. Connelly’s questions try to tease out the drivers’ ideas about decreasing accidents and discouraging dangerous driving.
This version of Why We Kill isn’t precisely the final version that was released. It was created by merging an audio track from UNC-Chapel Hill with visuals digitized from films at the State Archives of North Carolina. This is a great example of how local collections can complement each other, working together for a more complete picture of North Carolina’s history.
We’ll be posting several more blog posts in the coming weeks which will introduce the other films from our partners now viewable on DigitalNC.
*The remaining films are: Land of Beginnings; Minority Report: Vote and the Choice is Yours; Minority Report: We’re Not Alone; Nine Months To Go; The Outer Banks (possibly lost)
August 27, 1936 issue of The Franklin Press and Highlands Maconian, page 1
Earlier this year, the Highlands Historical Society approached us and asked us if we’d like to help “fill in” a year of The Franklin Press and Highlands Maconian newspaper. Most of this paper is available on microfilm that was created by one of our favorite partners, the State Archives of North Carolina; in fact, we had digitized 1924-1942 (excepting 1936) with the help of the Fontana Regional Library. The Highlands Historical Society came to us with a bound volume of the missing year, a volume full of print copies they’d never seen elsewhere. These have been added to DigitalNC.
In 1936, the U.S. waited to see the fate of the man who had kidnapped and murdered Charles Lindbergh’s child. Franklin Roosevelt was reelected. The summer Olympics were held in Berlin, under the eye of then Chancellor Adolf Hitler. All of these were covered by the Press, right next to local news of Macon County. We especially like “Interesting Places in Macon County,” a regular column by Mrs. T. C. Harbison that talks about local landmarks. An issue with this column is shown at right, talking about Whiteside Mountain.
You can browse all issues of The Franklin Press and Highlands Maconian in our Newspapers collection. We’ve also helped the Highlands Historical Society share a number of yearbooks and local newspapers online, which you can see and search through their contributor page.
Issues of CLOSER and it’s successor, Community Connections, have been shared online thanks to Buncombe County Public Libraries and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The issues date from 1987-2002.
CLOSER is the acronymn for Community Liaison Organization for Support, Education and Reform. According to a newspaper article from April 2020 published in the Mountain Xpress, this organization’s mission was “to serve as a liaison organization between the gay/lesbian community and the larger population, to provide mutual support, education and information regarding problems and concerns of the gay/lesbian community, to work for reform of social prejudices and discrimination practices and attitudes, and to foster for individuals and the community a sense of gay/lesbian identity.”
The paper, particularly in the earlier issues, includes very heartfelt reflections over the accomplishments of those involved in CLOSER. There are always announcements about events, and even lists of birthdays for that month. Coverage of the community members grappling with and documenting discrimination and hate speech is unfortunately a thread. However the paper shows local efforts to mobilize and provide mutual support. Through the 90s and early 2000s, the paper covers even more statewide and national news of impact to those in the community.
Many issues were scanned by the Pack Library in Asheville, which houses the organization’s archives. Some additional issues from the early 90s were added from the collections at UNC-Chapel Hill. You can view other newspapers on our newspaper landing page. Additional materials from the Pack Library can be found on our site as well as in their own digital collections.
Thanks to the Western Regional Archives, we’ve added more issues of Black Mountain Newsfrom Black Mountain, N.C., to our North Carolina Newspapers collection. This title was originally suggested for digitization by the Swannanoa Valley Museum. This batch includes issues from 1977-78 and 1981-83 and features some of the local happenings from the area.
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.
This 1899 photo is one of over 100 images from the Elizabeth City State University Archives now available on DigitalNC.org. The University was founded in 1891 to serve as a training school for African American teachers. In the photo shown here, students are gathered around a wood stove to keep warm in one of the rented rooms used for instruction while the permanent buildings were under construction.
