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DigitalNC Hits the Road With an On-Site Scanning Project at Johnston County Heritage Center

Abhego Atkinson Family Reunion, Beulah Township, 1912

Spicy Elizabeth Hayes Barefoot (1862-1931)

This December the Digital Heritage Center team took a field trip to Johnston County Heritage Center in Smithfield, North Carolina to do a session of on-location scanning. The Heritage Center is the former home office of First Citizens Bank in downtown Smithfield and includes exhibit space as well as storage for historic artifacts and records pertaining to Johnston County history. Armed with two flatbed scanners, laptops, external hard drives, and an armful of cords and cables, team members set to work scanning and filling out metadata for over 200 photographs that are now available on DigitalNC.

These photographs are part of Johnston county’s portrait collection depicting individuals from Johnston County and beyond. Many of the portraits from the session included labels detailing names, dates, and locations describing the photo. This information was recorded on-site during the scanning process, and makes for a useful set of images for those interested in genealogy or more broadly in Johnston County history. The number of well-labeled group family portraits in this collection make it great for tracing family history, and the Digital Heritage team enjoyed tracking individuals across different times and settings as we scanned.

Reverend Jesse and Susanna Watkins Wheeler

To learn more about on-location scanning, take a look at our previous blogpost detailing the initiative. To learn more about our partner Johnston County Heritage Center, and to see more of their materials, take a look at their DigitalNC partner page or check out their website.

 


New Yearbooks from Johnston County Heritage Center Now Online

Several yearbooks from various high schools in Johnston County are now online at DigitalNC, provided by our partner, the Johnston County Heritage Center. Included are editions of The Pine Needle from 1952-1965 by Pine Level High School, and editions of The Senoca from 1926, 1961, and 1963 by Selma High School.

A view of Pine Level High School in 1960.

Views of Selma High School and the town of Selma in 1926.

These yearbooks contain student portraits, class portraits, and photos of school groups, sports, and activities. Several of The Pine Needle editions also have “Class Prophecies”, where the students imagined where they would be in the future. The 1926 edition of The Senoca also has a history of the town of Selma, North Carolina, and includes some details on the school’s history after its previous building burned down. These yearbooks join other previously digitized yearbooks from these schools.

To view more materials from Johnston County Heritage Center, visit their partner page, or take a look at their website.

 


New yearbooks from the Johnston County Heritage Center

The By-Gones [1928], page 30

The By-Gones [1928], page 30

Thanks to our partner, the Johnston County Heritage Center, 10 yearbooks have been added to the North Carolina Yearbooks Collection.

The high schools featured in this batch include Micro High School, Benson High School, and Kenly High School. Two yearbooks of particular interest are Portals [1926] and the By-Gones [1928] both from Benson High School. They both offer a unique look into the lives of youth, schools, and communities during the 1920’s. They also feature several witty superlatives and advertisements, like the one featured below.

The Portal [1926], page 69

The Portal [1926], page 69

You can see all of the new additions from Johnston County at the links below:

To learn more about the Johnston County Heritage Center, please visit the contributor page or the homepage. To see more high school yearbooks like these, please visit the North Carolina Yearbooks Collection. Perhaps you’ll find yearbooks from your high school or you community!


Explore Johnston County with new issues of the Smithfield Herald

DigitalNC is excited to announce that four more years of The Smithfield Herald are now available online, thanks to our partner, the Johnston County Heritage Center.

The Smithfield Herald, established in 1882, was the oldest newspaper in Johnston County, offering an important insight into the county’s history. These semiweekly issues from January 1926 to April 1930 highlight local interests. Popular topics include weddings, deaths, church news, and local politics.

Local politics headline: "Elect Committees For 17 Townships"
Headline: "Women's Realm: weddings, parties, club meetings, social functions, personals, local happenings"

Also available to explore: creative writing! The Smithfield Herald published serialized fiction, poems, and short stories. Below is one example:

Poem titled "The Man Your Mother Thinks You Are"

Learn more about the Johnston County Heritage Center and browse their extensive collections here. To look through all 3,096 issues of The Smithfield Herald available on DigitalNC, click here. And to search through other North Carolina newspapers, click here.


Hog Slaughter Photos from Johnston County Online Now

DigitalNC now has 60 images of the hog slaughter process as performed on H. W. Strickland’s farm courtesy of the Johnston County Heritage Center. Be warned, these photos show graphic, up close details!

Taken in 1976, the photos depict the various steps involved in hog killing, starting with hanging and ending with meat preparation. Scalding, evisceration, and beheading procedures are also shown. Notably, the images show the outdoor setup as well as the many hands that go into the process.

If these have piqued your interest, click here for a quick link to all hog killing information as found in the many DigitalNC collections. For more images from Johnston County Heritage Center, click here. And to learn more about Johnston County Heritage Center, click here.


1960 Johnston County Training School Yearbook Now Available

Thanks to our partner, Johnston County Heritage Center, a batch containing the Johnston County Training School’s 1960 yearbook is now available on our website.

Three pictures of a marching band - two on the field, and one of the members posing on the steps of the school.

Johnston County Training School’s marching band

To learn more about the Johnston County Heritage Center, please visit their website.

For more North Carolina African American high school yearbooks, visit our African American high schools collection.

For more yearbooks from across North Carolina, visit our yearbook collection.


20 Years of the Johnstonian-Sun Now Available on DigitalNC

The Johnstonian-Sun, October 30, 1930, page 2

The Johnstonian-Sun, October 30, 1930, page 2

Nearly 20 years of newspapers are included in the latest batch from the Johnston County Heritage Center.

These issues of the Johnstonian-Sun cover the 1930’s through the 1950’s, which were fascinating times in North Carolina. Issues from the 1930’s have a strong focus on business and the local economic temperature, especially in Selma. The depression-era coverage also focused on politics, elections, and party platforms, many of which were printed in the paper weekly. The heading above is featured in several issues. Stories like these could be useful for teachers creating lesson plans centered on elections, demonstrating how every vote counts. The 1940’s issues often have detailed coverage of War World II, both at the local, national, and international level.

The Johnstonian-Sun, July 20, 1933, page 2

The Johnstonian-Sun, July 20, 1933, page 2

The Johnstonian-Sun, October 10, 1940, page 2

The Johnstonian-Sun, October 10, 1940, page 2

There are no known copies of these issues on microfilm and DigitalNC is excited to help make them more accessible.

To learn more about the Johnston County Heritage Center please visit the contributor page or the website. To see more historical newspaper from North Carolina, check out the North Carolina Newspapers Collection.


More yearbooks from Johnston County now Online

Senior Trip, from the 1962 Glen-Cedo

Senior Trip, from Glendale High School’s 1962 The Glen-Cedo Yearbook.

The Johnston County Heritage Center has shared more yearbooks from the 1950s and 1960s through DigitalNC. The schools represented in this latest batch are:

There are now 240 yearbooks and campus publications from Johnston County available on DigitalNC, and over 170 of those were contributed by the Johnston County Heritage Center.

 

 


More Johnston County High School Yearbooks Now Available on DigitalNC

Yearbook staff from the Johnston County Training School, 1947.

Yearbook staff from the Johnston County Training School, 1947.

We’ve just completed digitizing a new batch of materials from the Johnston County Heritage Center in Smithfield. Among the new materials are:

These yearbooks, combined with contributions from the Benson Museum of Local History and the Hocutt-Ellington Memorial Library in Clayton, add up to more than 200 yearbooks from Johnston County alone. The yearbooks span more than four decades and come from 18 different schools.


146 Johnston County high school yearbooks now online

Students at Richard B. Harrison High School on their way to class in 1966.

Students at Richard B. Harrison High School on their way to class in 1966.

Thanks to our new partner, the Johnston County Heritage Center, 146 Johnston County yearbooks from 16 different high schools are now on DigitalNC.  Many of the high schools were closed when Johnston County consolidated and integrated the school system in the 1960s, including three African American schools.

Planning the cover of Smithfield High School's newspaper, 1964

Planning the cover of Smithfield High School’s newspaper, 1964

The high schools include:

1925 Selma High School girls basketball team

1925 Selma High School girls basketball team

To view more high school yearbooks from across North Carolina, visit the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center’s North Carolina Yearbooks collection.


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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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