Peggy Altman and Judy Elliott taking out a barn of tobacco
Working closely with staff at Harnett County Public Library, we’re pleased to announce migration of over 1100 images from their Digital Database to DigitalNC.
This collection shows a wealth of activities, events, people, and places in Harnett County. North Carolinians of note can be found in this collection–Governors Kerr Scott and Luther Hodges, Paul Green, Susie Sharp–however more striking are the number of identified general citizens of Harnett County. Portraits are an overwhelming part of this collection, with photos of school sports groups, community groups, individuals, wedding portraits, and groups of folks posing at all manner of local events.
Many of these photos were taken by Talbott McNeill Stewart. The Harnett County Public Library obtained around 800 Stewart photographs in a 1978 donation from the Town of Lillington. The Library has preserved these photographs and, more recently, scanned, cataloged, and given broader access to them through their website. Stewart was Harnett County’s first full-time press photographer, working for the Harnett County Daily Record from the paper’s establishment in 1950 until his retirement. He documented weddings, sports teams, and more through his work.*
Womanless Wedding
This was the first migration of this type for us, and we were glad to work with our partners to move their content to a new home. We’re also pleased that this well-documented collection of Harnett County’s history can now be searched alongside the thousands of other images available through the Images of North Carolina collection on DigitalNC.
*Information provided by Harnett County Public Library.
Issues of The State’s Voice, published in Dunn, NC from 1933-1935, have been added to DigitalNC. Published by O. J. (Oscar J.) Peterson, this paper is much more of an editorial vehicle than many other papers at the time. The entire front page is devoted to his thoughts on one or more news items or topics of the day. His other interest was in writing informational essays about various parts of the state, like the one in this issue about Orange County and Hillsboro(ugh).
Over the years, Peterson managed a number of newspapers besides The State’s Voice including the Chatham Record, the Sampson Democrat, and the Lumberton Argus. Aligning with the Democratic platform of the time, Peterson expresses strong opinions in his paper about prohibition, public education, and economics. His editorials are so pointed that they are alternatively lauded or criticized in other papers.
In the final issue of the paper, Peterson says: “The publication of the State’s Voice has been an interesting experience, or experiment, in several respects.” The paper was intended to be read statewide, and was launched upon a “highly intellectual basis with a confessed non-public appeal.” He seems to attribute the demise of the paper in part to a lack of intellectuality amongst his subscribers, despite many of them being prominent in the state.
This paper was added on behalf of the Harnett County Public Library. You can view all of the materials contributed to DigitalNC from Harnett County Public Library on their contributor page.
One such happening is the unresolved story of Sheriff J.W. McArtan, who also served as the county tax collector in the early 1920s. McArtan ran several ads in the Harnett County News reminding people to pay their taxes on time. One short article in the March 3, 1921 edition warned that those who failed to pay would be put on the county’s “delinquent list.”
But what happened to that tax money? Apparently, it didn’t all make it to schools and roads. An article in the December 18. 1924 edition reads: “Former Sheriff and His Bondsmen to Contest Claim: J.W. McArtan and Bonding Company to Make Denial of Statement that He Is $54,000 Short.” It goes on to explain, “The News is informed that J.W. McArtan, former sheriff and tax collector of Harnett county, has employed counsel to defend him in the matter of settlement with the county for moneys alleged to be due to the county by the sheriff.” According to the rest of the article, McArtan’s attorney argued that several of the books keeping the tax records had been taken out of McArtan’s office, so it was impossible to tell “how much money has been collected on the tax books since they were taken away… that is, [the auditor] does not know to which account moneys turned over to him may be credited, nor does he know for what year they were due.”
$54,000 is certainly a lot of money to be missing, even by today’s standards. But to put things into perspective, converted to the value of today’s dollars, McArtan was on the hook for about $937,250.
What happened to former sheriff McArtan? His name brings up a lot of results in the Harnett County News and other nearby papers, so it’s up to you to look and find out.
For Lillington community members and library lovers, these issues of The Bookbag (from 1977-2007) are full of local stories and excellent library programming. One program that deserves a shoutout is the pet memorial project from 2002, where patrons could donate to the library in honor of a beloved pet and have their pet’s name inscribed on a bookplate. Of course, this raises the timeless issue of whether your pet shares your last name (looking specifically at Bee Bee Davis and Crook Tail Rosser here).
From the January-March 1984 issue of The Bookbag
The library newsletters also give a historic glance into popular technology over the last few decades, as evidenced by this article on the “New Microfiche Printer/Reader” from the January-March 1985 issue.
Homecoming Queen Mary Sue Godwin from the 1969 Echo
Even if you’re not a fan of cold weather, pumpkin-flavored treats, or changing leaves, you may still have a fondness for the fall football season. It’s the time of year again where students across the state celebrate their schools with the beloved tradition of homecoming.
Thanks to our partner, the Harnett County Public Library, we’ve added 23 more high school yearbooks and a few graduation programs to our digital collections. These yearbooks, which span five schools from 1948 to 1972, give us a look back to homecomings of years past.
One of the most common traditions in this set of yearbooks is honoring the homecoming court—the group of young women from whom the homecoming queen is chosen. The pageantry of the event takes on various levels at each school; in this 1972 spread from Lillington High School’s Footprints, a few people appear to be arriving on horseback.
Football players from the 1972 Footprints
Another popular tradition of homecoming is the big football game. Although homecoming queens tend to get a fancy portrait in the yearbook, each school seems to have a different way of celebrating its football team. In the case of Erwin High School’s The Hourglass from 1962, that celebration takes the form of action shots of each of the varsity players (plus a spread for the team photo and the coaches). Curiously, there isn’t much recorded about the actual games—who the schools played or who won.
Images from July 1977 in the Harnett County Public Library Children’s Outreach Program Scrapbook.
Thanks to the Harnett County Public Library, new scrapbooks are available on the Digital NC website. The collection includes memories from the Lillington High School Library Club, The Harnett County Public Library Children’s Outreach Program, the Harnett County School Board, and the Harnett County Library Scrapbooks (1967 – 1976 and 1982 – 1989). Included are newspaper clippings, photos of different activities and accomplishments, and much more!
Special thanks to our partner Harnett County Public Library. To view more from Harnett County, visit their partner page here.
To view our entire North Carolina Memorabilia collection, visit here.
Yearbooks from three different high schools in Harnett County are now available on DigitalNC. The schools include Lillington High School, whose Footprints yearbooks cover 1948 through 1963, Angier High School, whose Old Acquaintances yearbooks available are from 1959 and 1960, and a 1963 Seniorogue yearbook from Broadway High School.
The yearbooks are available courtesy of Harnett County Public Library. To view more North Carolina High School yearbooks, visit here.
Thanks to support from the North Caroliniana Society and to our partner, Harnett County Public Library, new issues of The Daily Record are now available on our website. This batch expands our current collection of the paper to include 1956 to 1962. Published Monday through Friday, The Daily Record suppled Dunn and Harnett County with local and global news stories. Today, the paper continues to be published in Dunn, North Carolina.
Starting in 1945, citizens of North Carolina fought for the establishment of a minimum wage in the state. The article to the right, “14-Year Fight Ends; Action First In South,” highlights the establishment of a minimum wage by North Carolina’s General Assembly in 1959–the first state south of Pennsylvania to do so. The bill guaranteed that all workers in the state would be paid a minimum of 75 cents an hour, equivalent to about $6.88 an hour today.
To learn more about Harnett County Public Library, please click here.
This holiday season join us here on the blog for the 12 Days of NCDHC. We’ll be posting short entries that reveal something you may not know about us. You can view all of the posts together by clicking on the 12daysofncdhc tag. And, as always, chat with us if you have questions or want to work with us on something new. Happy Holidays!
Day 9: We’ll Host Items You Scan
Many of our partners have done scanning on their own. However, as we like to joke here at the NCDHC, the scanning is the easy part! It is getting those materials online for the public to view that can be really complicated. Hosting materials online is a key part of our expertise and we are happy to take any items you’ve scanned yourself and load them into DigitalNC for you. We have helped partners who have just scanned a yearbook or two, as well as partners who have embarked on large scale community projects such as DigitalKM, or who have had to migrate their digital collection from their own system, as in the case of Harnett County Public Library.
One of over 200 scrapbooks Transylvania County Library scanned themselves and sent to us to host on DigitalNC
If you are interested in sending us materials you’ve scanned yourself, we have some guidelines for how we’d like to receive it.
All scanned images must have a minimum image quality of 300 dpi, and preferably come as TIFFs, although we will take JPEGs. There can’t be any watermarks on the images.
We’ll need at least minimal metadata with a title and unique filename for each item. We will be happy to share a template for you to fill out to send along with the objects and can discuss any questions that arise with that template. This page on metadata requirements is also a handy guide to check.
The scanned items and their corresponding metadata can be sent via FTP, a cloud based storage site such as Dropbox or Google Drive, or you can send us an external hard drive or thumb drive. Once we receive the items, we add it to our normal queue and get them online.
Check back on Thursday as we reveal Day 10 of the 12 Days of NCDHC!
We’ve taken a look back at this year’s top 5 most viewed items on DigitalNC, and they may not be what you expect! Here they are in order of popularity.
The most viewed single item on DigitalNC was this photo:
Want to know more about Madison Beach? We did, and found this page in a Rockingham County Public Library volume by local author John T. Dallas to help us out.
This picture of Jim Thornton and his band includes Congressman Harold D. Cooley and singer Mozelle Phillips. The band played at dances and events, as well as on the radio and a live country music television show out of Raleigh entitled “Saturday Night Country Style.”
From the 1880s, this postcard shows the bridge spanning Contentnea Creek in Wilson County, with “Wiggin’s Mill” and the reservoir waterfall in the background. Wiggin’s Mill was a sawmill, and can be found in newspapers of that era as a local landmark both on land and on the creek. The Wilson Advancedescribes the Wiggin’s Mill bridge floating away in a “freshet” in June 1891.
Taken together, yearbooks are the most popular items available on our site. It’s not surprising that one made the top 5 list. This 1976 Yackety Yack has spectacular photographs with 1970s style.
For the curious, here are some overall numbers for DigitalNC for 2017. Here’s looking forward as we work with partners to share even more of North Carolina’s cultural heritage in 2018!
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.
