Twenty new diaries belonging to Mrs. Mary Kelly Watson Smith (c. 1831-1924) are now available in conjunction with Greensboro History Museum. Mrs. Smith was married to Reverend Jacob Henry Smith (1820-1897), the pastor of Greensboro’s First Presbyterian Church for over forty years. The couple were married in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1857 before moving to Greensboro two years later. Mrs. Smith eventually had nine children, seven of whom lived into adulthood. The Smith family were active secessionists and supported the Confederacy during the Civil War. Her diaries reflect the experience and perspective of a matriarch at the time, recording Mrs. Smith’s involvement in church services, rotary clubs, and memorials for both O. Henry and Confederate soldiers.
These diaries record the last decade of Mary Smith’s life, from 1911 to her falling ill in 1923. They detail the sinking of the Titanic, Greensboro’s “building boom,” and the entirety of the first world war. Mary Smith includes various newspaper clippings (both national and local) alongside clippings from sermon books and hymnals.
Mary Smith’s diaries provide an essential insight into Greensboro’s political, social, and religious spheres during a period of great upheaval. Anyone interested in Greensboro, the First Presbyterian Church, or the beginning of the 20th century is sure to find these diaries interesting. You can read the new diaries on our website here. When you’re done with that, read more about Mary Kelly Watson Smith on the Greensboro History Museum’s website and view other materials from the museum here.
Ten new diaries belonging to Mrs. Mary Kelly Watson Smith (c. 1831-1924) have been added to our site, thanks to our partners at Greensboro History Museum. Mary Smith was married to Reverend Jacob Henry Smith (1820-1897), who was the pastor of Greensboro’s First Presbyterian Church for over forty years. Rev. Smith was a popular preacher who greatly expanded the church’s membership during his tenure. The Smiths moved from Charlottesville to Greensboro, where they settled permanently and raised a large family of seven children. Possibly due to an attic fire in 1900, only the diaries from the latter years of her life survive, and they reflect the perspective of an experienced matriarch and active member of the greater Greensboro community.
The newly uploaded diaries, which cover the years 1904-1911, are concerned mainly with church events, local news, and the social landscape of Greensboro in the early twentieth century. She also delves into her personal and family life, as well as national politics and major figures of the era. The Smiths were active secessionists and Confederate supporters who enslaved people before Emancipation. Mary Smith repeatedly refers to “The Lost Cause” of the Confederacy with reverent nostalgia, and in 1911 describes a visit from Jim Henry, who was formerly enslaved by the Smith family.
These diaries are a valuable resource for anyone interested in early twentieth-century Greensboro, the First Presbyterian Church, or Southern history. Read more about Mary Kelly Watson Smith on the Greensboro History Museum website and view other materials from the Museum here.
Thanks to our partner, Greensboro History Museum, a batch containing over 100 additional issues of Grimsley High School’s student newspaper, High Life, as well as nine issues of the Greensboro Daily Workman from the 19th century are now available on our website.
A majority of the High Life issues from this batch are from the 1960s and 1970s. During these years the hippie movement, a movement which featured long hair, advocation of nonviolence and love, as well as folk and rock music, was taking place. Like many parents during this time, one student named Marcia Quigley had a lot to say about individuals, boys in particular, keeping their hair long.
The article begins with Quigley discussing the problems of boys having long hair which include them becoming traffic hazards due to their hair dangling in front of or blowing into their eyes, long hair leading to premature baldness, and denied entry to certain buildings. Quigley then goes on to dramatically assert that boys, simply by allowing their hair to grow out, turn from being “honest, dynamic, [and] all-American” to scroungy, upstart hippies with a reputation as a rat. If attacks on their character and driving abilities weren’t enough, the writer also makes sure to include the possibility of being bullied by fellow students and adults. Quigley’s complaint in the May 20, 1968 issue of High Life can be read in its entirety here on our website.
To learn more about the Greensboro History Museum, please visit their website.
A gap in newspaper issues available from Greensboro, N.C. has now been filled thanks to our partners at the Greensboro History Museum. Close to 200 new issues of the Greensboro high school student newspaper, High Life, are ready to view online. These additions fill in years ranging from 1927 to 1958.
To view more materials from the Greensboro History Museum, visit their partner page here. To be taken directly to the Greensboro History Museum web page, click here. To see more newspapers from Digital NC, visit our North Carolina Newspapers collection.
We’ve worked with the Greensboro History Museum to add more publications from Greensboro High School (now Grimsley High School) to DigitalNC. Included in this most recent batch are more of the school’s student newspaper, the High Life, from the 1920s-1960s. You’ll also find The Sage, one of the school’s literary publications, with issues from 1910-1918. Finally, there are three additional yearbooks – 1930, 1968, and 1969. Our partner provided this succinct history of the school’s yearbook and other publications:
Greensboro High School’s first annual was published in 1909 and named The Reflector in 1910. To help with the war effort during World War I, the school chose not to publish the yearbook in 1918, saving funds by using the May 1918 edition of its magazine, The Sage, as a smaller, abbreviated version. This continued even after the war, in 1919 and 1920, before publication of The Reflector resumed in 1921. In 1926, 1928, and 1929, there were both January and June editions, a result of adding mid-term graduating classes starting in 1926. By the mid-1920s, because of growing difficulties funding the yearbook, The Reflector‘s content was significantly reduced, and it went from hardcover to paperback in 1926 before publication ceased after 1930.
While the Depression did not fully impact Greensboro Senior High and its other programs until 1933, when a local bond-supplement failed to pass, the already financially strapped yearbook was affected and publication stopped. Despite interest in restarting an annual soon after financial stability for the Greensboro schools was restored in 1936 (via a successful bond vote), Principal A.P. Routh insisted that the yearbook have full and strong financial stability before being resumed, hence it did not occur then. The effort was further delayed a few years later by the significant impact of World War II on school life.
After the war, interest in publishing a yearbook continued to grow. The financial situation was finally stabilized, and the first edition of the newly named Whirligig was published in 1950 (after almost occurring in 1949), ), the yearbook that is still issued each year at Grimsley today. During the 19 years of no annuals (1931-1949), photos of seniors were published on souvenir photo sheets or in the year’s final issue of the school newspaper, High Life.
Thanks to our partners at the Greensboro History Museum, DigitalNC is proud to announce more digitized issues of Greensboro High School’s (now Grimsley High School) student newspaper, High Life. This addition covers 1921 to 1939, which precedes the issues that had already been available from 1940 to 1978.
The paper shares relevant news with GHS students, covering topics such as academics, athletics, social events and clubs, and opinion pieces. Writers frequently share humorous columns to keep things interesting, including this clipping mocking “a Kentuckian at Yale:”
However, there’s a time and place for serious news as well. The 1922 issues often shared an “Administrative News” section, where Greensboro school administrators shared useful information with students. Here are some sample headlines from this section:
Six issues of The DailyWorkman from 1885 to 1887 are now available on DigitalNC, thanks to our partners at the Greensboro History Museum. The Daily Workman documents local activities and shares news that may interest all locals. Business activities, classified advertisements, and all manner of public notices are included in this paper.
To view all issues of The Daily Workman, click here. To learn more about the Greensboro History Museum, visit their partner page here or their website here.
New to our site is a sizable collection of yearbooks and other campus materials from Greensboro. These items came to us from our partners at the Greensboro History Museum and Greensboro Public Library, and mark the beginning of our partnership with Greensboro Public Library.
Drivers Education at Page High School was clearly not for the faint of heart, as evidenced here in the 1965 Buccaneer.
Included in this batch are 31 yearbooks from Greensboro, Smith, Walter Hines Page, and Bessemer High Schools spanning from 1916 to 1967. There is also a hand-written roster kept by Greensboro Senior High School that contains the names and other information such as colleges attended, marital status, and addresses of the school’s graduates from 1922 to 1966.
The inside cover of the 1954 edition of Whirligig, Greensboro High School’s Yearbook, shows “The Setting of the GHS Story 1953-1954.” This setting includes the bunny hop, a fact-filled science building, the fountain of youth, and many references to Greensboro native O. Henry.
Alongside the yearbooks are student literary magazines from Greensboro High School. These student publications — titled Greensboro High School Magazine, The Sage and Homespun — include poems, plays, stories, and more. The earliest of these digitized in this batch is from 1907 and the most recent from 1960.
The covers for Greensboro High School’s Student Literary magazine — Homespun — creatively depict the theme of each edition. Shown here are four covers of the magazine printed between 1927 and 1931.
Materials from Greensboro History Museum can be found here, and the materials from the Greensboro Public Library here. For more information about Greensboro History Museum, visit their website or partner page. For additional information on Greensboro Public Library, check out their partner page or website.
A student speaking to a crowd of other students, 1958
A new batch of over two dozen yearbooks from Greensboro High School has been digitized and made available on DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner, the Greensboro History Museum. Dating from 1910 to 1958, this collection includes annual yearbooks, a 1906 copy of the Greensboro High School Magazine, and several issues of Homespun, Greensboro High School’s literary magazine dating back to the 1920s and 1930s.
These yearbooks include individual portraits, class portraits, photos of faculty, and more. They also highlight photographs of student activities, social clubs, the school’s orchestra and band, the school’s sports teams, and more.
The 1925 Greensboro High School Hockey team
This batch also includes copies of magazines that students worked to write, edit, and publish. The Greensboro High School Magazine, the first of its kind to be uploaded to DigitalNC, was published three times a year by the students, and included editorials, short stories, and more. One student wrote about his experience riding along with Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan as he was traveling throughout the South, for example. The school’s other magazine, Homespun, highlights the writing and literary accomplishments of the students, including smaller fictional short stories, poems, 1-act plays, and more.
Follow the links below to browse the items included in this batch:
Thanks to our partner, the Greensboro History Museum, additional issues of the student newspaper from the former Greensboro High School, High Life, are now available on DigitalNC. Newly available issues cover the years 1923-1926, 1937-1941, 1957, and 1976-1978. The paper features information from the high school, now Grimsley High School, and the surrounding Greensboro community.
As a school newspaper, written by students and for students, High Life focuses on its students’ activities. Seniors are featured each May, and several of these special issues include “Last Will and Testament” sections where those leaving the school “give” things to the freshmen, sophomores, and juniors. For example, “Bill Hancock is to receive Ed McDowell’s dramatic trend,” and “R. D. Apple reluctantly relinquishes his long-held position on the mound to Hampton Shuping.”
Greensboro High School Seniors of 1938, May 31, 1938
The students’ comic traditions continue in some of the articles included throughout the paper.
One student published an account of having the measles:
“Home With Measles or How Did I Get in This Fix?,” May 30, 1941
Decades later, an unnamed student announced her addiction to the television network HBO:
To see more from the Greensboro High School student newspaper, click here. To learn more about the Greensboro History Museum, visit their website or their DigitalNC partner page.
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.
