Thanks to our partner, Chowan University, a new batch with six new scrapbooks are now available on DigitalNC! These scrapbooks showcase Chowan University’s 1950s sports teams, 1980s Data Processing Management Association, early years of the Center for Ethics, and student life during the 1920s and 1930s.
Viola Dana Winslow’s scrapbook provides a look into the lives of students of Chowan College in the 1920s. A majority of the photographs in this scrapbook show Viola and her friends having fun. Underneath the photographs Viola writes descriptive captions about what they are doing as well as the name of her friends and their hometowns. Additionally, she documents some of the sites, views, and buildings around campus and downtown including the science building, her church, the tea room, and the homes of some professors. More photographs from Viola’s scrapbook can be seen below!
565 issues of newspapers produced by students of Chowan University (formerly Chowan College) can now be searched and browsed on DigitalNC. Ranging in date from 1923 to 1945, the Chowan University Student Newspaper collection includes five different titles, some of which ran concurrently:
The Chowanian
The Daily Chowanian
Chowan Opener
Smoke Signals
Chowan Today
Along with 65 editions of The Chowanoka (Chowan’s yearbook) and 118 course catalogs already available on DigitalNC, these student newspapers contribute to a rich picture of life at a small college in North Carolina from the perspective of both students and administration.
Chowan’s current Department of Graphic Communications has a long history at the university, and the strength of this curriculum is reflected in the quality of both design and content of different newspaper titles over the years.
From the late 1950s through the early 1970s The Chowanian used a magazine-style layout with covers that capture its period’s graphic design zeitgeist.
A later title, Smoke Signals, used a more traditional newspaper layout that also produced visually interesting front pages.
If any Chowan alums are reading this post, leave a comment! We’d love to hear from you about your involvement with Chowan’s long tradition of student-produced newspapers.
A set of distinctive scrapbooks from Chowan University (née Chowan College) in Murfreesboro has just been added to our site. These scrapbooks span a long range of the school’s history beginning in the 1920s and then jump ahead to the 1980s.
A photo from Chowan College Scrapbook [1924-25]
The oldest scrapbook of the collection shows a bit of Chowan’s origin story as a women’s college. Though it’s not a formal yearbook, someone took the time to write in the names of students, their home towns, nicknames, birthdays, ambitions, and happy memories of them. They even pasted a little picture next to some of their entries. For instance, Jewel Askew was from Lewiston, N.C., her friends called her “Juke,” her birthday was December 5 (she was a Sagittarius), and her ambition was to have a “rose garden” (unclear why that’s in quotes or what the hidden meaning there might be). She must have had some good times with the scrapbook’s owner, since one of them wrote beside her entry, “Dear pal, don’t forget the ireeb-eus [?] of Feb. 14-16, 1925.”
Covers of the 1982-23 (left) and 1981-82 (right) Phi Theta Kappa scrapbooks
The more recent scrapbooks are somewhat more legible, and it’s clear that the Iota Delta Chapter of Phi Theta Kappa had a dedicated artist on their side. The 1982-1983 scrapbook, which was encased in wood covers (approx. 2′-3′), had an etching of Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press.
Thanks to our partner the Northampton County Museum, we now have three additional years of The Roanoke-Chowan Times. These issues, from 1926-1928, feature local news from Rich Square, Roxobel, Seaboard, Potecasi, and Kelford, N.C., as well as other nearby towns.
The hyper-local news sections from these issues is a big part of their charm. Often, the front page is divided into columns with the name of the town at the top. The news items range from newsworthy (as we would think of that term today) to the intimate. Here are three examples from the September 2, 1926 issue:
Although the personal items are fun to read in retrospect, it’s probably a relief that this kind of journalism is less common today.
Another interesting characteristic of this paper is it’s adoption of the first line of the North Carolina state song in its masthead: “Carolina, Carolina, heaven’s blessings attend her.” The paper speaks to the song’s widespread popularity in the state; the lyrics were written by North Carolina Supreme Court Judge William Gaston in 1835, but the song wasn’t officially adopted until 1927. The first instance in our records where the first line appears is in the April 23, 1903 issue—more than 20 years before it was made official.
This batch of papers is particularly exciting for us because it’s the first set of papers scanned on the new equipment at our satellite location, NCDHC East at Elizabeth City State University.
Chowan Female Collegiate Institute, The Casket, March 1854
A single issue of The Casket, the student literary magazine of the Chowan Female Collegiate Institute (later Chowan University) is now online at DigitalNC. The issue, which dates from March 1854, is an interesting window into the minds of young, educated women during the mid-Nineteenth Century.
The writings within explore topics like religion and the home, but are especially remarkable for supporting views that seem decidedly modern about women. For example, a piece written by one E. Lee attacks the viewpoint that women are incapable of mathematical thinking and closes with the following proclamation: “Henceforth, then, let it be acknowledged not only that Woman has a fibre more in the heart than man, but that she has also as many cells in the brain” (page 6). Another column by the same author criticizes the existing historical and literary canon for ignoring the achievements of women in both fact and fiction. “The world’s history, from the most remote period, furnishes a record of the noble deeds and attainments of man [emphasis in original]…,” she writes, then asking, “But whither shall we look for an account of woman’s deeds? As a sword in its sheath, they are concealed” (page 7-8).
Carolina Baptist newspaper masthead from September 2, 1857.
Thanks to our partner, Wake Forest University, there are 19 new newspapers added to DigitalNC. Dating from 1857 to 1925, these newspapers were written for Christian communities from the mountains to the Piedmont to the coast of North Carolina.
Most of the newspapers are affiliated with the Baptist denomination, and their audiences vary in size and geography. Some were published for specific churches, like the Broad Street Worker “Devoted to the interests of Broad St. Baptist Church” in Winston, N.C. Others were published for a wider audience by regional, state, or national organizations, like the North Carolina Baptist Missionary Worker and The Gospel Herald published by the Boards of the Baptist State Convention, and the Conflict published by the Anti-Evolution League of America.
To look through the 58 issues of these publications, click the links below:
I’ve just been looking through some of the early Chowan College (now Chowan University) yearbooks that are now available online. One thing stood out to me: the clubs. They had the standard clubs that you usually see on college campuses, like a glee club and an art club, but in the early days at Chowan, there were a whole lot more, like the Air Castle Builders Club, the Taffy Club, and the Canoodlers Club. The names changed every year, and all had comical pages in the school yearbook. Here are a few of my favorites: the Societa Italiana (1914), the Toasters’ Club (1916) and the Cooking Club (1917).
I’ve especially enjoyed reading the various rules and regulations laid out in these volumes. Most of them apply to female students, and seem to be aimed at thwarting “improper” behavior. Some of my favorites are below.
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.
