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New Exhibit: Constance Matthews Collection; Items from Braswell Memorial Library

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Constance Matthews, age 14

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Constance Matthews and Winks the cat, 1925

The Constance Matthews Collection exhibit from the Braswell Memorial Library in Rocky Mount is now available on DigitalNC!

Constance Matthews (1912-1940) was an interesting young woman who grew up in Spring Hope, North Carolina and was an active member of the Nash County Community. Matthews was the only child of Mattie Lou Bolton Matthews and John C. Matthews, a prominent postmaster and businessman. A graduate of the North Carolina College for Women in Greensboro (now UNC-Greensboro), she was also the founder of the Spring Hope Alumnae Club.

Matthews was most notably known for being an active writer and the editor of the Nash County News in Spring Hope. She was one of the first female newspaper editors in the area during the early twentieth century. You can view some of Constance Matthew’s editing work on DigitalNC. Several issues of the Nash County News are available in the North Carolina Newspapers Collection.

Tragically, Matthews died at the young age of 28 after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage while riding her horse in Rocky Mount. You can view an obituary on page 22 of the July 1940 issue of the Women’s College of the University of North Carolina’s Alumnae News.

The genealogist Annie Pearl Brantley of Spring Hope acquired the Matthew family photos and gave them to the Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.). A selection of photographs of Constance, her friends and family, and her activities are now available on DigitalNC, capturing a glimpse into the short life of a remarkable woman.

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The Blackboard [January 1908]

Also now available from Braswell are several issues of The Blackboard, a monthly newsletter from High School Department of Rocky Mount Graded Schools. In addition to these items, there is also a church dedication of the First Methodist Episcopal Church South of Rocky Mount. You can view these items at the links below:

To learn more about Constance Matthews and see the full collection, please visit the exhibit page. To learn more about the Braswell Memorial Library in Rocky Mount, please visit the contributor page or the website.


More Watson Family and Braswell Memorial Library Materials Now Available!

The North Carolina Digital Heritage Center has digitized newly arrived Watson Family photos and materials as well as a collection of Rocky Mount High School newspapers, all from the Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.).

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Truck Load of Tobacco Weighing 23,188 LBs – October 14, 1935

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Watson Purebred Fall Grains – 1952

In April, we published a large quantity of Watson Family photographs and advertisements. The new additions include more family photos and ads, as well as images from the Watson Seed Farm Inc. fields and warehouses. Many of the Watson Seed Farm images feature Watson brothers Van Sharpe Watson, Jr. and George Benedict Watson. For reference, please refer to the Watson Family Tree, which was featured in an earlier blog post. Other images of the farm include harvesting processes, workers such as Mr. James Alston, and harvesting product such as hybrid corn seed and tobacco.

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Watson Brother Demonstrating Bagging Watson Seed – circa 1950

Braswell Memorial Library also contributed a selection of Rocky Mount High School newspapers, ranging from 1950 through 2004. Earlier volumes of the newspaper were called The Blackbird, which changed to The Gryphon in 1969.

There are now over 1,000 items from Braswell Memorial Library available online. You can view them all here.

 


New on DigitalNC: Photographs and Documents from the Braswell Memorial Library in Rocky Mount

Sarah Skyler and Doris Weeks posing with basketball (1940).

Sarah Skyler and Doris Weeks posing with basketball (1940).

The North Carolina Digital Heritage Center recently uploaded more materials from the Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.). Several of the items and documents had belonged to Selma Lee Rose, including a collection of photographs, her high school transcript, and a certificate of baptism for Selma Joyner. Also included in the recently digitized Braswell Memorial Library materials is not the first but the second commemorative napkin in our digital collection!


Watson Family Materials from Rocky Mount Online

Beth Watson

Beth Watson

The North Carolina Digital Heritage Center recently digitized a number of items related to the Watson family of Rocky Mount. The family is well known for their tobacco and other seeds grown on the Watson Seed Farm in Whitakers, N.C. The materials came to us from the Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.).

The items are diverse, ranging from greeting cards and wedding invitations to tobacco industry publications; and span over thirty years. Though the objects cluster around a few key players, most of the Watson family appears in at least one item; to help navigate the extended family a quick look at their family tree is very helpful. Due to the amount of overlap in naming, each family member is referred to by their full name as it appears on the family tree in descriptions of the objects. George Benedict Watson, Sr. is referred to as George Benedict Watson, and his wife Martha Anne Speight Watson is different from her daughter Martha Anne Watson.

Extension Research on Wheels Annual Review, 1977


Depression-era issues of the Rocky Mount Herald Now Online

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Newspaper issues covering 1934 to 1938 of the Rocky Mount Herald are now online through DigitalNC.  The paper, published weekly, focused on both local and national news items, and covered stories include big events such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s election. As Rocky Mount was a major center of tobacco commerce in the eastern part of the state during this period, farming news, particularly as it related to tobacco, is heavily covered.  There are also more light hearted elements to the publication including a comic strip page in each issue, which provide a view into 1930s humor.

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The newspaper is part of the Newspaper Digitization Project and was recommended by the Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.).


Mr. Blandings Dream House in Rocky Mount, N.C.

When it was nearing time to release the 1948 comedy “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House,” starring Cary Grant and Myrna Loy, the studio had a novel promotion idea. The story features two harried New Yorkers who move to the country and get in over their heads trying to renovate an old house. In what must have been one of the more elaborate promotional stunts of the time, RKO Pictures built 73 “dream houses” throughout the United States, including two in North Carolina, in Greensboro and Rocky Mount.

The dream houses were fully modern buildings, often equipped by General Electric, which used the opportunity to show off many of their new products. The houses were open to public tours for about a month, often with the price of admission going to local charities. They were later sold by raffle.

The dream house in Rocky Mount was located at 1515 Lafayette Avenue. According to the 1950 Rocky Mount city directory, the house was originally owned by Samuel L. Arrington. Local photographer Albert Rabil photographed the interior of the house, probably around the time of its opening. Rabil’s photographs are preserved in the Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.), and many of them are available on DigitalNC, including twelve showing the interior of the dream house.

The dream house was clearly a nice promotional opportunity for businesses all over town. The photographs show signs listing the companies that provided everything from the furniture to the windows. Most notable is the kitchen, filled with gleaming GE appliances. The images are not as clear as Rabil’s studio photographs but there is definitely enough detail to get a sense of what a modern “dream house” looked like in 1948.

Thank you to Local History Librarian Traci Thompson at the Braswell Memorial Library for providing information about the Rocky Mount dream house and also for sending links to websites and articles with more information:


Rocky Mount Weekly Reporter, 1884

Whenever we start a new digitization project in the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center, we like to work with materials that are in the best possible condition, in order to preserve the often fragile original items and to get the highest quality image we can. How, then, did we end up with this?

This is the only known surviving issue of The Weekly Reporter, a newspaper published in Rocky Mount in the 1880s.  This issue was printed on this date in 1884.  These are the best images we could get without having expensive conservation work done on the paper.  Even with all of the fading, folding, torn pages, and stains from old attempts to tape it together, the images capture a fair amount of detail.  If you look closely, you can make out parts of the social column, selections from jokes and stories reprinted from other pages, and some ads for companies and products ranging from the Rocky Mount Iron Works to “Mexican Mustang Liniment.”
This paper is in the Local History & Genealogy section of the Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.).

North Carolina Library Association in 1939

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As the North Carolina Library Association is winding up its biennial meeting this week in Hickory, we’ve had fun comparing this year’s program with a program from the 1939 meeting, which is in a scrapbook of library activities compiled by the Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.) in the 1930s. While this year’s meeting featured lots of sessions about online research tools and e-books, the 1939 program included a “Discussion of the Use of the Printed Catalog Card,” and “A New System of Book Charging for College Libraries.” But a few of the 1939 sessions, like “The Librarian as a Coordinator in an Educational Enterprise” and “Financing the Public Library,” could very well have been titles of talks today.

The full 1939 program is in the Thomas Hackney Braswell Memorial Library Scrapbook, starting on page 32.


Rocky Mount Jaycees Scrapbook

We recently digitized a large scrapbook created by a dedicated group of members of the 1951-1952 Rocky Mount Junior Chamber of Commerce – the “Scrapbook Committee”. The scrapbook, held by the Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.), contains correspondence, newspaper clippings, photographs, and Jaycee promotional materials.
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The Rocky Mount Jaycees were very active, promoting public safety and “Americanism” through pamphlets, meetings, and editorials; organizing an annual “Rural Youth Day” attended by around 2,500 girls and boys; advocating for an airport in Eastern Carolina; supporting local boy scouts; and hosting family picnics, costume balls, and beauty contests.

It was this group of Jaycees that originally came up with the idea for the Rocky Mount Children’s Museum; they went on to provide half of the initial funds for construction The scrapbook also details the Jaycees’ purchase of a miniature train for Sunset Park – still an attraction today!
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It is no wonder that, in 1952, the Rocky Mount chapter went on to win the Harold A. Marks Memorial Award – presented to the “most outstanding Jaycee chapter in the nation.”



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