The Ladies’ Aid Society minute books are a fascinating resource for learning not only about women’s public life and women’s societies, but noted challenges in Mount Holly and how they were being addressed by a portion of the community. These minute books also feature lists of member names, attendance records, constitution and by-laws, mission statements, and handwritten documents detailing the history of the Society and its different iterations from 1896 to the 1920s.
The Ladies’ Aid Society of the Mount Holly Presbyterian Church was started on October 13, 1896 when the reverend called a meeting of the ladies of the church to organize. The Society was fairly active from 1896 to 1899 with members of the Society making bonnets, aprons, quilts; using dues to help pay for church improvements and debts; and donating to the Barium Springs Home for Children.
Around 1900, there was a period of inactivity until early January of 1906, when the ladies of the church met with the pastor to revive the Society. From 1906 to 1917, the revived Society continued to help pay for improvements to the church and property including the (partial) purchase of a bookcase for the Sunday school; a plate and baptismal bowls; two Psalms and hymns with music for the choir; and a manse. In addition to these improvements, the Society made several donations of clothes to the Barium Springs Home for Children.
In November of 1917, the ladies organized the Missionary Society. Extremely active in their first year, they bought a service flag for the church, pieced a quilt for Barium Springs Home for Children as well as donated to their dining room fund, raised $300 to help build a new church, and sent collection to foreign missions. Nothing is noted about the activities of the Society in the period between 1918 to 1923 in a document outlining the history of the Woman’s Auxiliary found between the pages of the Woman’s Auxiliary Minutes [1928-1932]. However, the Minutes of Missionary Society [1918-1924] fills in the silence of this period with detailed accounts of their meetings and planned activities such as raising money for the dining fund, finishing quilts, appointing ladies to clean up the church on a monthly rotation, and more. The Missionary Society was eventually disorganized in 1923.
However, by the end of 1923, the Woman’s Auxiliary was organized with sixteen enrolled members and contributions given to seven different causes. Similar to previous iterations, the Women’s Auxiliary continued to raise money for various causes and improvements for the church through successful fundraising and events such as the circa 1928 picnic supper at the Kiwanis Club of Gastonia.
To view more materials from the First Presbyterian Church of Mount Holly, view the exhibit page here.
Thanks to our partners at Campbell University, you can now explore Buie’s Creek High School yearbooks on DigitalNC’s website. This batch has materials from 1948- 1977, that’s almost thirty years worth of memories. These high school yearbooks are a great way to see what school was like for students in Harnett County. Yearbooks are popular because of they contain so many photographs, and have a level of organization and labeling that is helpful in identifying folks. Not to mention, flipping through an old yearbook is nostalgic.
Digital NC has made available new materials from the First Presbyterian Church of Mount Holly. A long-standing institution in Gaston County, the First Presbyterian Church of Mount Holly has a wealth of records for genealogists and other researchers. These latest uploads span over one hundred years and add significantly to our pre-existing Mount Holly First Presbyterian collection.
This addition includes a batch of minute books covering the years 1887-1954 and weekly bulletins from 1976-1998. Minute books include registers of communicants, baptisms, marriages, and deaths. Bulletins provide an in-depth account of church activities and the staff, teachers, and congregants involved in them. Researchers can view the entirety of our Mount Holly First Presbyterian digital exhibit here and all of our North Carolina Community Contributors collections here.
Constructed in 1918, the Fuquay Consolidated School was one of the first schools to benefit from the Rosenwald Foundation and one of over 800 Rosenwald schools in the state. The following year, in 1919, the school opened its doors to students. A high school department was added in the 1930s, however, it wasn’t until 1952 that the high school building was added to the property. Interestingly, the school did not hold a graduation in 1942 because the senior class of that year elected to return the following year for the newly added 12th grade.
The 1950s were a period of growth and change for the school with a total of 34 faculty members, 11 new buses, modernization of the home economics department, installation of water fountains, new high school building, and the addition of commercial education and a marching band. Eventually grades one through six were moved in 1964 to the newly constructed elementary school, Lincoln Heights Elementary, while grades seven through 12 remained at Fuquay Consolidated High School. The school remained in operation until 1970. Today, the school buildings have been repurposed by the Fuquay-Varina Community Development Corporation (FVCDC) into a childhood learning center and apartments for individuals 55+.
To learn more about and see more materials from North Carolina Community Contributors, visit their contributor page here.
Information about the former Fuquay Consolidated School campus was gathered from the FVCDC, an organization created in 1991 by graduates of Fuquay Consolidated High School and members of the community. To learn more about the FVCDC, visit their website by clicking the link here.
Thanks to a thoughtful community member, we’ve recently digitized our first yearbook from the small Catholic school St. Genevieve-of-the-Pines, once located in Asheville, N.C. This yearbook, which was recovered from an estate, shows the close-knit students at the all-women’s school in 1942.
According to Carolina Day School’s history page (which apparently absorbed the school in the 1980s), St. Genevieve-of-the-Pines was originally formed by French nuns in 1908 (Genevieve is the patroness saint of Paris in the Catholic tradition). It morphed over the next few decades into a women’s junior college, then two separate schools for boys and girls (St. Genevieve’s Prep and Gibbons Hall), then again into the combined St. Genevieve-Gibbons Hall School. This yearbook is from the Junior College of St. Genevieve-of-the-Pines. Today, one of the few remaining landmarks of St. Genevieve’s is the grotto, which was transferred to Carolina Day School’s campus in 2008.
In addition to providing information about the church’s history and participation in the Mount Holly community, this collection of bulletins may prove useful for genealogists interested in the Gaston County area. The bulletins frequently list a directory of church staff, including Sunday School teachers, fellows, and scouts. Weekly activity leaders and other members of the congregation are frequently listed as well.
Thanks to our generous community partner, Olivia Rainey Local History Library, and at the request of our partner Wake Forest Historical Museum, the book Connections: 100 Years of Wake Forest History by Carol W. Pelosi is now available to read for free on DigitalNC. You can flip through the pages of Connections and find local history of Wake Forest, NC ranging from 1910-2008. Information covers topics like farms and crops, the railroad, local businesses, holiday celebrations, festivals, and local government leaders.
To learn more about what our community partners, Olivia Rainey Local History Library are up to please visit their website.
To view other materials made available by the Olivia Rainey Local History Library visit their contributors page.
To view more North Carolina historical items visit the North Carolina Digital Heritage Centers website DigitalNC.
The large collection of tapes from interviewees around the country offers a great opportunity for teaching with primary sources; here are three ideas for how these materials could be used.
1. Journalism: What makes a good interviewer?
Although the interviewers in these tapes are rarely identified by name, their interviewing styles vary. Having a team of researchers ask the same set of questions makes it easier to identify some of the strategies that each person uses to engage their subject. Here are a few examples:
According to the American Association for Women in Community Colleges, close to 30% of community college presidents in 2020 were women. At the time of the recorded study, the researchers note that the proportion of women was closer to 7% (according to Baker and Rouche on tape 2). The majority of these tapes features interviews with male-identifying subjects; only four of the 50 community college presidents recognized for their leadership were women (thought other women in leadership positions at Miami-Dade CC were interviewed as well).
How do women’s answers differ from men’s in these recordings (or do they)? How do they approach the topic of representation in this setting?
In each of these recordings, community college leaders reveal some of the strategies that they use to attract and retain students, serve their populations well, and prepare their institutions for the future. Since this study’s findings were published in 1992, community colleges have had to adapt and reflect even more. What has changed in community college leadership over the past 30 years? How have schools shifted their approaches to serving students?
One notable article from the August 20, 1891 issue (from an earlier batch) gives us insight into some of the peculiar medical practices that shaped how we think about addiction today. The headline reads, “Dr. Keeley’s Cure for Drunkenness.”
The treatment proposed here is to inject “bi-chloride of gold” four times a day as an “antidote” to the “disease” of drunkenness. The author of this article compares it to using quinine to treat malaria and mercury to treat syphilis (no longer recommended).
Wilmington wasn’t the only city excited about Keeley’s cure; Leslie E. Keeley actually opened his first clinic in Dwight, Illinois and advertised his cure heavily. By 1892, there were over 100 Keeley clinics throughout the U.S. and Europe reportedly treating 600 people per month.
“The weak will, vice, moral weakness, insanity, criminality, irreligion, and all are results of, and not causes of, inebriety,” Keeley wrote.
And aside from the injections, Keeley’s approach to treating addiction was unlike most methods of the time. According to the article in the Africo-American Presbyterian, patients received the injection “in their own rooms at prescribed hours,” suggesting that they received personal treatment. Some have suggested that a placebo may have also accounted for the success of the treatment; Keeley boasted of 60,000 “graduates” of his program by 1892, indicating its widespread popularity.
Whatever the reasons for his success, Keeley seems to have enjoyed popularity among the Christian publications of North Carolina.
An advertisement for the Keeley Institute in Greensboro, N.C. (1910)
We are one of 29 finalists for the Institute of Museum and Library Services 2018 National Medal for Museum and Library Service. Now through April 13, IMLS is asking the people who have been impacted by the Digital Heritage Center to share their stories. If you have a story you’d like to share, we’d love to hear from you! Please contact us or share via social media by tagging us on Facebook (@NC Digital Heritage Center) or on Twitter (@ncdhc).
Today’s story comes from Professor Robert C. Allen, Professor in the Department of American Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill and faculty lead of the Community Histories Workshop. Dr. Allen shared the thoughts below in support of our Medal application and we reshare them today with his permission.
Textile Workers Marching in Gastonia, NC, 1929. From the Gaston County Museum of Art & History
“Since 2013, I have been working closely with the N.C. Digital Heritage Center on ‘Digital Loray,’ the most ambitious public humanities program ever undertaken by UNC. This project uses the adaptive reuse of an iconic industrial structure—in this case, Gastonia’s Loray Mill, one of the largest cotton mills built in the state—as a catalyst for a long-term community history and archiving initiative. The ‘heart of this open-ended project is an archive of more than 2500 digital objects, brought together in a single interface from the UNC North Carolina Collection and other Wilson Library collections, other institutional archives, community cultural heritage organizations, churches, and individual community contributors.
“The NC Digital Heritage Center was absolutely instrumental in our ability to undertake this kind of deeply collaborative community history work. It worked with the Gaston County Museum of Art and History—the primary cultural heritage organization in the county—to identify, digitize, and publish material from its collection that could be ‘added’ to Digital Loray. Three community members had saved many documents, photographs, maps, mementos, and other material from the mill at the time of its closing in 1993. Working with the N.C. Digital Heritage Center, we encouraged them to donate this material to the Gaston County Museum of Art and History, which, in turn, allowed the center to facilitate the digitization and publication of these unique artifacts…
“In short, I could not extend my teaching, graduate training, and the work of my unit into communities in North Carolina without the invaluable assistance of the N.C. Digital Heritage Center. But I am not the most important beneficiary of its effectiveness and leadership: it enables hundreds of small museums, public libraries, historical societies, and other cultural heritage organizations to add a digital dimension to their work and, in doing so, to preserve and share the histories of their communities. These perennially threatened local organizations can undertake what otherwise would be impossibly expensive and technically complex digitization projects without the need for technical specialists or third-party software and hosting solutions.
“The N.C. Digital Heritage Center should be a model for other states. It deserves much more attention on a national level than it has received, particularly in the realms of public history, digital history, public humanities, and digital humanities. I have reviewed and attended presentations about ‘sexier’ and much better resourced projects over the past few years, but none I think has had a greater or longer-lasting impact than the quiet but profoundly important work of my colleagues in the N.C. Digital Heritage Center. I congratulate them and thank them for all they do to make my university a great resource for the people of North Carolina.
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.
