Thanks to our newest partner, Greene County Public Library, a new batch of materials is now available on DigitalNC! The Greene County Public Library, located in Snow Hill, North Carolina, is one of eight libraries in the Neuse Regional Library System. The materials in this batch include the only known volume of estate papers for Greene County prior to the 1870s, 1850 Greene County census, and a North Carolina Agricultural Station bulletin that provides a look into 1940s medical care.
In February 1877, a legislative act was passed that, among other things, created the North Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station. This act directed the station to conduct research on plant nutrition and grown, discover which fertilizers were best for each crop, and conduct other needed agricultural investigations. Nearly two months after the act was passed, the first station in the state, as well as in the South, began its work in a one-room chemistry laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Eventually the management of the station was transferred to the institution that would become North Carolina State University (NCSU); however, the North Carolina Department of Agriculture (NCDA) continued to maintain its relationship with the station. Over time, a total of 15 Agricultural Experiment Stations were opened across the state. Today, the stations are cooperatively operated by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and North Carolina State University.
In November 1948, the Agricultural Experiment Station at North Carolina State College (eventually NCSU) published bulletin no. 363, titled “Medical Care in Greene County.” The bulletin provides a fascinating look into 1940s medical care in the county for both its white and Black residents. In addition to population demographic information, the bulletin provides a breakdown of the county’s medical facilities, medical workers, how far people traveled to receive care, how long patients stayed, who went to these facilities and why, cost for care, how patients paid their bills, and if any had insurance. Based on this information, the North Carolina Agricultural Station includes suggestions in the bulletin for the county’s medical care moving forward.
A new batch of yearbooks from Greene County are now available on DigitalNC, courtesy of our new partner Greene County Museum. Included in this group are eight years of Ho-Hi Echoes by Hookerton High School from 1953 to 1961, nine years of The Maury Mecca by Maury High School from 1952 to 1961, and over a dozen years of The Talisman by Walstonburg High School from 1947 to 1961. Also included is twelve issues of yearbooks by Snow Hill High School from 1949 to 1961, where the yearbook went through 3 different name changes in 6 years!
These yearbooks include individual portraits, class portraits, as well as photographs of activities, clubs, and sports. Some of the yearbooks also include histories of the classes, and “class prophecies”, where the students imagined where they would be in the future.
Follow the links below to browse the yearbooks from the schools, included in this batch:
Ho-Hi Echoes, 1953-1961, Hookerton High School, Hookerton, N.C.
We’re pleased to have added to DigitalNC over 600 issues of the Jones County Journal, dating from the first issue in 1949 through 1961. This paper has been digitized on behalf of the Neuse Regional Library System which serves Greene, Lenoir, and Jones Counties. Due to the quality of the microfilm from which these scans were completed, most of the photographs in the newspaper are of poor quality or completely dark, however the text has rendered clear.
The Journal was published in Trenton, N.C. by the Lenoir County News Company. The first issue lists Mrs. Rachel Cox as editor and women are prevalent as news gatherers in that issue’s “Opening Remarks,” though this changes in later issues.
The Journal features a lot of news and advertisements from the more populous nearby Lenoir County, but Jones County residents get more coverage as the paper matures. The paper covers tobacco farming and agriculture, local government, and personal news like weddings, obituaries, and social events. Many of the earlier issues discuss traffic and accidents as more and more residents purchased automobiles.
Below is the front page of the Journal published right after Hurricane Hazel made landfall in the state in mid-October, 1954. Hazel caused casualties, severe flooding, and heavy property damage. In the United States, coastal and other eastern counties in the Carolinas suffered the most. The front page below shows some of the worst hit Kinston homes and business after the storm.
Jones County is only lightly represented on DigitalNC, so we’re glad to add this newspaper for researchers. If you’d like to view other items we’ve digitized for that area, head over to the Counties page. You can also look at all of the work we’ve completed for Neuse Regional Library.
Student studying at Southern High School in Graham, NC. From the 1961 Southerner yearbook
Yearbooks from the following schools in Alamance County are now available online on DigitalNC courtesy of Alamance County Public Libraries. The yearbooks added cover the early 1960s at these schools.
Vaiden Whitley, now East Wake High School, is located in Wendell, N.C. in Wake County. These yearbooks show the school back in 1971-1973, also known as some of the most fashionable years for both yearbooks and student basketball uniforms.
While these games may not have been quite as exciting as some of the ones in this year’s NCAA tournament, they do illustrate North Carolinian’s longstanding cultural obsession with the sport. In 1971, the Vaiden Whitley men’s team only came out on top in 8/19 games—not quite as good as the women’s team, which won 7/13. Still, the coaches called it a “profitable season.”
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
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.
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.
Group of Soldiers Posed with Firestone Officials, from the Gaston Museum of Art & History.
This Veterans Day, we thought we’d mention some best bets for finding and searching materials on DigitalNC related to military history. Some time periods and subjects have better representation than others, so we’ve focused on the five wars that have the most related materials. This post has been updated in 2022 to show the most recent systems for our content.
Tip 1: Search by Subject
To isolate materials that are predominantly about a particular war, you can use the subject specific links listed below.
You can use the Advanced Search (see below where to find in the search window) to narrow your search.
Use the Advanced Search to further narrow your query
If you click one of the links above and then go into the Advanced Search, you can use more terms to further narrow your search. Using “partial phrase” is the best option to get the widest set of options that might fit that term. (see the graphic below that illustrates this)
You can also do a full text search that combines (1) your research interest (perhaps a name, a topic, or an event) in conjunction with (2) the name of a particular war. This may yield a lot more results, depending on your research interest, but it could also zero in on your target faster.
Only interested in photographs? Try this search, which is limited to photos that contain the word “military” or “soldiers” as a subject.
Tip 2: Search by Date Range
Another tactic is to search or browse items that were created during a particular war. These don’t always have that war as a subject term, but they often deal with wartime issues or society regardless.
A list of alumni and students killed or missing in action, from the 1944 UNC-Chapel Hill Yackety Yack yearbook, page 12.
Keep in mind that doing a full text search will be ineffective about 98% of the time when it comes to handwritten items on our site, as most do not have transcripts. This is just to let you know that you may need to read through handwritten items pulled up in one of the searches above if you believe they may contain information you’re interested in.
Our partners have shared a lot of yearbooks on DigitalNC and, while they may not be the first thing that comes to mind for military history, many colleges and universities recognized students who served. Especially for the Vietnam, Korean, Gulf, and Afghan wars, yearbooks document campus reactions and protests. You currently can’t search across all of the yearbooks available on DigitalNC; our site has high school yearbooks published up through the late 1960s, and college and university yearbooks and campus publications through 2015.
Tip 3: Newspapers!
Searching the student and community newspapers on DigitalNC can yield biographical information about soldiers, editorials expressing local opinions about America’s military action, as well as news and advertisements related to rationing and resources on the homefront.
The Newspapers Advanced Search is your friend here! You can target papers published during specific years. You can also narrow your search to specific newspaper titles.
Screenshot of the Newspapers Advanced Search page, with the search phrase “Red Cross” and limiting the results to papers published from 1914-1918.
We now have so many military newspapers on our site, we have a whole exhibit dedicated to them, which you can view by going to our Military Newspapers in North Carolina page.
The titles include:
Air-O-Mech, published by servicemen stationed at Seymour Johnson Field, 1943-1944
Cloudbuster, published at UNC-Chapel Hill to share news about the Navy pre-flight school held on campus, 1942-1945
Hot Off the Hoover Rail, published by the community of Lawndale for servicemen from their city, 1942-1945
The Caduceus, published by the Base Hospital at Camp Greene (Charlotte, N.C.), 1918-1919
The Caromount, published the community at Caromount Mills in Rocky Mount “solely for the benefit of all former Blumenthal employees now in the service of our country,” 1943-1955 (later years published for the mill community itself rather than those in the military)
The Home Front News, published by the Tarboro Rotary Club for servicemen from their city, 1943-1945
Trench and Camp, published by The Charlotte Observer for Camp Greene, 1917-1918
Bonus Resource: Wilson County’s Greatest Generation
One of the largest exhibits on our site is Wilson County’s Greatest Generation, an effort by the Wilson County Historical Association to document the service men and women of Wilson County, North Carolina who served in World War II. Documentation is organized by individual, and includes personal histories, photos, clippings, and other ephemera.
We hope this information can guide you through researching military history on DigitalNC. If you have any of your own tips or questions, please let us know by commenting below or contacting us.
The latest batch of materials from Charlotte Mecklenburg Library includes an interesting look at life during World War I in North Carolina–documented through newspapers. The Caduceus, published from the Base Hospital at Camp Greene, gives a detailed look at the goings on of soldiers, doctors, and nurses during their time stationed in Charlotte.
Camp Greene held more than 40,000 troops, rapidly approaching the population of the entire city of Charlotte (46,000 in 1920). The Base Hospital was a 2000 bed complex, staffed by many doctors and nurses. Many of these enlisted personnel wrote articles for the paper, which was published every Saturday. Funded through the advertisements purchased by local businesses, publishers encouraged those living at the camp to patronize businesses located nearby.
What sets the Caduceus apart from other camp newspapers during the period is its documentation of events happening at the camp specifically, as opposed to the national and war updates given by other papers. From baseball games verses local teams to the performances of soldiers’ choral groups, the Caduceus documents many of the weekly activities of those based at the camp. The images below represent some of the many types of materials published in the paper.
Caduceus, August 24th, 1918; page 15
Caduceus, June 8th, 1918; page 6
Another fascinating feature of this batch is the weekly section authored by nurses serving at the camp. The “Army Nurse Corps News” offers a look into the lives of the many women who also served their county during WWI. These sections of the paper published news, poetry, and biographical information about nurses who were on the base, especially the new arrivals. This could be an excellent resource for researchers studying women’s roles in WWI, even outside of North Carolina.
Caduceus, November 23rd, 1918; page 15
To learn more about Camp Greene, check out the Trench and Camp and the corresponding blog post, another newspaper from the camp during WWI, available on DigitalNC.
Caduceus, November 23, 1918
To learn more about the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, please visit their contributor page or the homepage. To see more newspapers from North Carolina, including those that cover WWI in our state, please visit the North Carolina Newspapers Collection.
Mr. and Miss School Spirit, 1965, Junius H. Rose High School
We just finished working with East Carolina University to digitize over 60 high school yearbooks from the eastern part of the state. While predominantly from Pitt County, there are also yearbooks from Beaufort, Craven, Edgecombe, Franklin, Lenoir, and Wilson Counties, as well as the first yearbooks we have on the site from Greene, Halifax, and Washington counties. Below is a list of the schools represented, and the years added.
These are the first high school yearbooks contributed from East Carolina University. You can view more yearbooks, by school, on our North Carolina Yearbooks page.
About
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.
