A new batch of materials from our partner, Rockingham County Public Library, adds scrapbooks of news clippings, books and booklets about Rockingham County History, images, and more to DigitalNC. Included are two volumes collecting “Remember When” columns from The Madison Messenger, which recount historic events from the town’s past and the “Madison-Mayodan Story” which was a packet put out by the Chamber of Commerce to encourage investment in the community in 1960. It includes statistics about industry in the town, as well as some great photographs.
The newest batch of materials from our partner, Rockingham County Public Library, includes two yearbooks, three books, a vertical file, several newspaper issues, and two short films. The yearbooks, from 1967 and 1968, were created by Madison-Mayodan Junior High School. The books cover the stories of Rockingham county notables John D. Robertson and James J. Dallas, as well as the Greensboro Telephone Exchange. The vertical file contains materials related to Smyrna Presbyterian Church’s centennial celebration, and the newspapers include more issues from the Fieldcrest Mill Whistle.
Lastly, video footage in this batch includes two films converted from 8mm format. The first shows the 1969 Madison Christmas Parade filmed in downtown Madison, NC. The second is a film created by Macfield Inc. that details their continuing education program for employees.
Serious student government officials seen in the 1968 Madison-Mayodan Junior High School yearbook.
To browse through the items in this batch, click the links below.
A Scrapbook: Mayodan, North Carolina People (Cover), 1909-1944
Grace Baptist Church Sunday Program from the 57th Anniversary Service, 1981
The emphasis of this batch was on local history. Pictorial histories of Reidsville and Rockingham County generally are joined by self-published booklets by a local historian, a scrapbook of Mayodan people and events from 1909 to 1944, and materials related to church histories from the vertical files.
Grace Baptist Church in Mayodan, N.C. celebrated its 57th Anniversary in 1981. A history of the church was published and distributed along with the Sunday Program on August 23, 1981. The vertical files include newspaper clippings, programs, and cemetery surveys to flesh out the history of various local churches in Mayodan, Ellisboro, Reidsville, and Madison.
While the vertical files focused primarily on church history, booklets published by John T. Dallas tackled more diverse topics. Dallas compiled fifteen booklets containing archival research, newspaper clippings, registers, and photographs between the years of 2006 and 2012. Seven of these booklets are dedicated to genealogical studies of notable families, while others cover topics such as murder, gambling, and confederate history.
These materials were digitized as part of a 2014-2015 Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) EZ Digitzation Grant, as distributed by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, administered by the State Library of North Carolina.
Of note is the Honor Roll of Rockingham County. This book is full of portraits of Rockingham county men and women who served during World War II. Beneath each portrait are details including the names of parents, hometown, and service dates. African American servicemen are included separately at the last few pages.
Also new are the following scrapbooks, ledgers, cards, and yearbook:
Advertising Cards for H.D. “Tarvia” Jones Construction Repair and Maintenance and Southern Electric Service Company
Color slides featuring library technology from the 1980s are now available at DigitalNC.org. The slides come from the Rockingham County Public Library and feature an early version of a computerized card catalog as well as microfilm and microfiche readers. The slides also feature the audiovisual equipment available for use in the library, some examples of patrons using the equipment in the Listening Room, and computer terminals available for patron use.
Also available are color slides featuring other aspects of the Rockingham County Public Libraries in the 1970s and 1980s, including storytimes,library staff, and library spaces (such as Stoneville Library’s Genealogy Area, Reidsville Library’s card catalogs, and Madison Library’s circulation desk).
Thanks to our partners at Edgecombe County Memorial Library, we are pleased to announce DigitalNC now has over two hundred new records to explore! Pore over records from Tarboro’s history of shipping and manufacturing, read through decades of magazine club programs, or get inspired by dozens of new recipes! This new batch covers a truly dazzling array of subjects, from as far back as 1878 to as recent as 2022. They include correspondences, legal ledgers, and even uniforms! Whatever your historical interest, this collection likely has something for you.
Locals from or around Tarboro will be pleased to find a great quantity of photographs, publications, and records relating to downtown Tarboro’s historic structures. Historians have taken painstaking efforts over the years to preserve the history of this beautiful town, and the fruits of their labor are now easily seen. Many storefronts, churches, and civic buildings have carefully curated profiles, containing detailed photographs, preserved newspaper clippings, and written histories. Perhaps the most detailed of these profiles is Tarboro’s old town hall building, which served as a fixture of community politics before it was demolished in the late-twentieth century. The destruction of the building is detailed in full, even including detailed photographs of its demolition!
Readers interested in women’s history will be elated to discover over a century’s worth of documents related to the Tarboro Magazine Club, a collective of women dedicated to intellectual growth and community. The Magazine Club has graciously provided decades of correspondences between members, detailed lists of membership records, and magazine subscription lists. A vast number of programs are also included, which list the annual theme of the club alongside a schedule of lectures and talks given by members of the Magazine Club. Educational “learn-at-home” courses were also used by the club, and even include materials from UNC Chapel Hill!
Locals may also fondly remember DeBerry’s Colonial Dining Room, a traditional southern kitchen that served the community for years before its unfortunate closing. Fortunately, our collection now includes a host of photographs, postcards, and menus from the dining room. We even have detailed photographs of the famous uniforms worn by the waitresses! Perhaps most tantalizing of all is the inclusion of over one hundred recipes carefully recorded by Ruby DeBerry, the matriarch of the restaurant. The recipes are an absolute gem, reflecting mid-century southern cuisine in a new way. Miss a dish? Now you can recreate it at home!
Hungry for more? You can find this collection (and more) here. Want to know more about Tarboro? Contact our partners at Edgecombe Memorial Library at their website here. Want to test some recipes? Let us know how they turn out!
The Home Economics classes at Chatham Central High School offered students instruction and experience in sewing, planning menus and budgets, first aid, child care, and cooking. However, for those interested in learning more about and gaining more experience in cooking, the school offered a food service class. This class provided refreshments for club activities along with catering in the community. And according to The Centralia [1973] Chatham Central’s food service class gained a positive reputation among students and the public for their catered confectioneries!
To learn more about Chatham County Public Libraries, visit their website here.
Initially, the journal was published semi-annually (1976-2005) but is currently being published annually. When viewing the collection you can see the shift in publishing frequency. Inside the covers of this journal you will find the history of historical landmarks, maps, funeral and cemeteries along with general connections among families in and around the Rockingham County, NC area.
To view more genealogy journals from across North Carolina, click here!
The 1946 Front Cover of “The Torch” from East Spencer High School.
23 yearbooks from several high schools in Rowan County are now available on Digital NC. Included in the new collections of NC Yearbooks are “Spencerian” and “The Railroaders” from Spencer High, “The Torch” from East Spencer High, and “Crisp ‘N Curls” from Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing. The high school and school of nursing yearbooks cover each high school from the early 1920s to the late 1950s, marking pivotal changes for many students during that time.
Special thank you to our partner Rowan Public Library. To see more yearbooks from Rowan Public Library on Digital NC, visit them here. Be sure to check out our massive collection of High School and College Yearbooks throughout North Carolina!
One of the delights of the bicentennial edition of The Pilot is that it is full of little tidbits of Moore County history. One blurb celebrates the legacy of Flora Macdonald, the folk hero who helped Charles escape from Scotland after the Jacobite Rebellion. After she was imprisoned in the Tower of London and pardoned, she immigrated with her family to North Carolina (hence Flora Macdonald College, now St. Andrews University, in Laurinburg). According to this article, some residents of Moore County can claim her as an ancestor.
From The Pilot, June 27, 1984
Another legendary figure who makes a guest appearance in The Pilot (joke unintentional) is Amelia Earhart. Earhart visited the Moore County airport in 1931 in an autogyro, a precursor to the helicopter. Her visit was part of a long history of aviation in the area, which apparently tended to conflict with another hallmark activity: golf. One resident, hoping to get flights over the course banned, wrote, “I have long felt that the airoplane flying over the golf courses is a nuisance to the players. Today I was scared out of my wits, as well as others with me, when the plane shut off its engine and swooped down to a height of about 25 feet over our heads on the 16th hole, course 3… and coasted to the field amid laughter in the plane at our discomfort.”
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.
