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Currituck County Yearbooks Now Online!

Thanks to our partner, the Currituck County Public Library, several issues of yearbooks from local Currituck County High Schools are now available on our website. This batch includes yearbooks from 1943-1970 from Dr. W. T. Griggs High School in Poplar Branch, N.C. and Joseph P. Knapp High School in Currituck, N.C.

The cover of the 1957 issue of the yearbook for Dr. W. T. Griggs High School in Poplar Branch, N.C.

For more information about the Currituck County Public Library, please visit their website.


Correspondence related to the Currituck Shooting Club is now on DigitalNC from new partner Currituck County Public Library

Currituck County Public Library has partnered with us to provide documents related to the Currituck Shooting Club. This robust collection of letters, telegraphs, and notes cover decades of communication between members and business associates of the Currituck Shooting Club.  The collection includes a booklet (shown below) on the club written by one of its most prominent members, Samuel Russell who was President of the club from 1901 to 1926. The booklet tells of the clubs origins, being organized in June of 1857 and incorporated in February of 1877. It also includes a list of the clubs Presidents, Secretaries, Treasurers, Officers, and members beginning at the clubs founding and ending in 1940.  The Club stood until 2003, when it burned down.  

booklet

Currituck Shooting Club booklet

booklet

List of Presidents

Correspondence to Samuel Russell makes up the bulk of the collection and primarily covers the shooting clubs early 20th century business dealings. If you are interested in what communication and establishing and maintaining the business of a shooting club looked like at the turn of the century or just the leisure habits of the upper class on the east coast, this collection would be useful for that research.  

letter

Correspondence to Samuel Russell

Click here to learn more about the Currituck Shooting Club and to learn more about our new partner, Currituck County Public Library, visit their website here


50 Years Later, “Carteret County News-Times” Headlines Aren’t All That Different

Black-and-white photos of commercial streets flooded.Sometimes, it’s easy to feel like the problems of today are unique to our time and place, but this latest batch of the Carteret County News-Times (1960-1963) demonstrates that people have been working through similar problems for at least 50 years. One issue, from March 16, 1962, somehow touches on big storms flooding the area (and the difficulty of insuring coastal property), U.S. House elections, and redistricting—almost as if it were printed in 2022.

Luckily, no one died in the nor’easter that hit Morehead City and the rest of the coast in March 1962, but the storm did cause quite a bit of damage. A paper from the preceding week (March 2, 1962) pictures flooding along some of the commercial streets and describes buildings that were not up to code to withstand the storm. One commissioner reported that an insurance firm in New York abstained from insuring the area because of the building code problems. A week later, a headline reads (perhaps unsurprisingly): “Red Cross Says Best Way to Help Dare Is Give to Local Red Cross.”

Another front page story describes a bid for the 3rd Congressional District by Morehead City resident S.A. Chalk Jr. Chalk Jr. ran against incumbent David Henderson in the Democratic primary (though in a much different Democratic party than we think of today). He accused Henderson of voting for “policies that are bound to cause even further trouble,” saying, “He claims he’s conservative, but his voting records do not bear this out.” Chalk Jr. still lost the primary, apparently, as Henderson went on to represent the district until 1977.

Aside from the familiar arguments of House elections, the article also mentions that Harnett County was added to the district in 1960. And while the headlines haven’t changed much over the last 50 years, the list of counties included in the 3rd District certainly has. In 1962, the district included 10 counties: Carteret, Craven, Duplin, Harnett, Jones, Onslow, Pamlico, Pender, Sampson, and Wayne. In 2023, the district will expand and morph to contain parts of 15 counties: Beaufort, Camden, Carteret, Craven, Currituck, Dare, Duplin, Hyde, Jones, Lenoir, Onslow, Pamlico, Pitt (partly), Sampson, and Wayne (partly). For visual thinkers, an interactive map of NC’s congressional districts can be found here.

You can see the full batch of the Carteret County News-Times here and explore all of our digital newspapers in our North Carolina Newspapers collection. You can also explore more materials from the Carteret County Public Libraries on their partner page and their website.


Additional Issues of The Roanoke News Now Available

Header for The Roanoke News. It reads: The Roanoke News. Established in 1866--Serving Halifax and North [H]ampton counties.

Thanks to funding from the State Library of North Carolina’s LSTA Grant and our partner, Halifax County Library System, new issues of The Roanoke News from 1923 to 1944 are now available on our website. This expands our current holding of the paper from 1878 to 1944. The paper, published weekly, primarily features articles on local, North Carolina news such as the completion of the Wright Memorial Bridge.

Prior to 1931, individuals looking to visit North Carolina’s Outer Banks, or those wishing to visit Dare’s county seat in Manteo, would have had a rather long trip ahead of them. In 1921, the General Assembly passed a $50 million bond issue that was to be used for improving and paving roads that would connect county seats. In addition to these new roads, several concrete bridges were constructed that shortened the distance between places significantly. One of the bridges constructed under the bond was the Wright Memorial Bridge. In April of 1931, the Wright Memorial Bridge was finally opened to the public after 10 years of construction. The bridge spans the entire three mile width across Currituck Sound, connecting Point Harbor to the Outer Banks. The bridge still enjoys heavy usage almost 100 years later.

To learn more about the Halifax County Library System, please visit their website.

To view more newspapers from across North Carolina, please click here.


The Daily Advance, Newspaper from Elizabeth City, Now Online

The headline in The Daily Advance announcing the sudden death of the 29th President of the United States.

Over 1300 issues of Elizabeth City’s daily newspaper–The Daily Advance, provided by our partner, Pasquotank County Library, are now digitized. These issues span the time period from 1923-1927, and as indicated by the paper’s name, were published every day except Sundays. The Daily Advance was founded in 1911 and continues to be published online and in print. Elizabeth City is located in Pasquotank County on the North Carolina coast. Currently the paper also covers Currituck, Camden, Perquimans, and Chowan counties.

During the 1920s The Daily Advance covered both national and local news including politics, the economy, and other stories of note. The paper provides a lens to see the nation during the roaring ’20s through the view of coastal North Carolinians. The introduction of new products and industries, dramatic political events, shifts cultural norms, and changing role of the media can be seen in this local paper.

To browse through issues of The Daily Advance, click here. To see more materials from Pasquotank County Library, take a look at their partner page or visit their website.

New women’s fashion trends discussed in the September 14, 1925 issue of The Daily Advance


We Want to Come to You! New On Location Digitization Service Begins

On Location Digitization Services icon with young boy riding in a toy car

Logo image courtesy the Braswell Memorial Library! “Ricky in Toy Car” 

Have you been interested in working with the Digital Heritage Center but find it difficult to get to Chapel Hill, or have concerns about having your materials off site? We want to come to you! We’ll be working with two or three cultural heritage institutions over the next nine months to try out on-location scanning.  If you’d like to nominate your institution, read on and use the nomination form linked at the end of this post.

What We Do

Here’s what nominated institutions will receive as part of this process.

  • We will bring our scanners, computers, and staff to your institution to digitize and describe materials from your collections. We would be there for one full weekday, at a minimum.
  • We’ll host the scanned images and associated metadata on DigitalNC.org, and give you copies of the original scans to use in any non-profit context.
  • Optionally, we can do a presentation for staff and/or the public related to any of the following topics:
    • The Digital Heritage Center’s services (for staff at your institution and/or other local cultural heritage institutions)
    • A demonstration of what we’re doing while we’re there (for staff at your institution)
    • The variety of resources you can find on DigitalNC.org and other fantastic digital collections in North Carolina (staff or the public)

What We’ll Need from Partners We Visit

If you’re chosen, we’d need:

  • At least one conference call before arrival to clarify expectations, work with you on scheduling, and talk through the materials you’d like scanned.
  • Description and a light inventory of the items we’ll be scanning, if there isn’t one already available.
  • Some assembly and preparation of the materials you’ve chosen. This might include physically pulling all of the content together before we arrive and removing staples if the materials are stapled at the top corners.
  • A designated staff contact regularly available to ask questions regarding what we’re scanning while we’re there, and to help with logistics like getting equipment in and out of the building, etc.
  • An indoor location that has:
    • at least two power outlets,
    • internet connectivity,
    • a work area large enough for 2 scanners and 4 laptops as well as extra room for materials handling,
    • seating for four people, and
    • is away from the public so we can get the most scanning accomplished in our limited time (ideal but not required).

Additional Guidance for Nominations

  • We’ll be giving priority to nominations from institutions furthest from Chapel Hill and to new partners. If you are a prospective partner, please check to make sure you’re eligible.
  • The materials have to be owned by your institution.
  • The materials should cover North Carolina subjects, events, and people.
  • For these on-location sessions, we’re accepting nominations for the following types of items:
    • photographs (prints) and/or postcards
    • looseleaf print materials up to 11×17”
    • bound items may be considered, but in very limited numbers and only if transporting them to Chapel Hill would be impossible
  • Materials can be fragile but should be stable enough to withstand gentle handling and placement on a flatbed scanner.

We’ll review nominations according to the following criteria, so you may want to address these in your nomination form:

Category Point Value
New partner 1
New town 1
New county** 2
Materials document an underrepresented
     community or population
1
Materials are well described/inventoried 5
Majority of materials date from 1945 or earlier        1
Materials are believed to be unique 1

** We have yet to work with any institutions in the following counties: Alexander, Bertie, Bladen, Camden, Caswell, Chowan, Clay, Currituck, Dare, Gates, Graham, Greene, Henderson, Hoke, Jones, Mitchell, Northampton, Onslow, Pamlico, Swain, Tyrrell, Yancey

Use this nomination form to submit!

We’ll start reviewing nominations on September 30 and will notify selected institutions shortly thereafter. If a selected institution ends up not being able to host us, we’ll continue down the list.

We’re excited about trying out this new service. Please contact us with any questions and share this with any institutions you think might be interested.


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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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