21 new oral histories detailing the lives of those who lived in Mount Airy and Surry County are now online thanks to our partners Mount Airy Museum of Regional History and Surry Community College. The digitization of the oral histories from Mount Airy Museum was done by our colleagues in the Southern Folklife Collection and the work was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
First page of the transcript from the Margaret Leonard, Evelyn Coalson, and Esther Dawson interview. The women are sisters and were interviewed in 1997.
The participants were primarily interviewed in the 1990s about their lives in the Mount Airy and Surry County region dating from around 1910 until 1970s. The Spanish Flu pandemic, World War I, World War II, race relations, the Civil Rights movement, and the Great Depression are all topics covered in these oral histories, which feature men and women and Black and white people.
While these oral histories were digitized last fall and winter, with the COVID-19 situation this spring, they provided a very useful option for enhancement while our staff worked from home. We have been able to add transcripts for each of the oral histories that didn’t have them, as well as enhanced metadata, making them even more accessible than before for our users.
To learn more about our partners on this, visit their websites at Surry Community College and Mount Airy Museum of Regional History. To learn more about our partnership with the Southern Folklife Collection, visit our post here. And to view and listen to more oral histories on DigitalNC, visit our North Carolina Oral Histories exhibit.
The North Star from North Surry High School, 1962
Nine new Surry County yearbooks from the 1950s and 1960s are now available on DigitalNC, thanks to our partners at the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History.
The batch includes seven Windswept Echoes from Copeland High School in Dobson, which adds to five existing yearbooks. We now host a complete set from 1950 to 1961 for this school.
Two North Stars from North Surry High School in Mount Airy (from 1961 and 1962) are also included in this batch. We previously held one from that school from 1960.
These yearbooks represent two of thirteen high schools from Surry County represented on DigitalNC. Click here to browse them all.
Click here to see all nine yearbooks from this batch. To see all materials from the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History, click here. To learn more about them, visit their partner page here or their website here. DigitalNC is very thankful for their partnership in making these yearbooks accessible online.
Thanks to our partners at Surry Community College, DigitalNC is proud to host sixteen new yearbooks from Surry County. The batch consists of 8 yearbooks from Pilot Mountain High School (1947-1961) in Pilot Mountain, 4 yearbooks from Beulah High School (1956-1959) in Dobson, and 4 yearbooks from Surry Central High School in Dobson (1965-1968).
The Eaglet of Beulah High School, 1956
The yearbooks provide insight into the lives of students at the three schools in the mid-twentieth century, sharing memories of academic and extracurricular activities.
The Aquila of Surry Central High School, 1966
We are thankful to Surry Community College for helping us make these yearbooks accessible online. To view all 16 yearbooks in this batch, click here. To see all digitized materials from Surry Community College, click here. To learn more about the college, visit their partner page here or their website here.
A new batch of yearbooks from Surry County are now available on DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner, Surry Community College. Included in this collection is almost two dozen yearbooks from schools across Surry County, dating from the late 1940s to the late 1960s. Also included is a special yearbook from 2011 that celebrates 50 years of education at Easy Surry High School in Pilot Mountain, N.C.
An exterior photo of East Surry High School.
These yearbooks contain portraits of individuals and their class photos as well. Also included are photographs highlighting clubs and student activities, including clubs, sports teams, and events.
The 1967 graduating class of Mount Airy High School standing in front of the building
The East Surry High School 50th Anniversary yearbook contains a history of the town of Pilot Mountain since the 18th century, the history of East Surry High School since 1961, and include class photos and list of the graduating classes of every year from 1962 to 2011. Included in the second half of the yearbook are advertisements and photos of families that had multiple generations of students go to East Surry High School.
Follow the links below to browse the yearbooks from the schools included in this batch:
- Knob Whispers [1949, 1956, 1958-1959], Pilot Mountain High School
- The Origo [1958-1961], Westfield High School
- Field-Airs [1953, 1957], Westfield High School
- East Wind [1966-1968], East Surry High School
- The Airmont [1952, 1957, 1959, 1967-1968], Mount Airy High School
- East Surry High School 50th Anniversary Commemorative Edition [2011]
These yearbooks are an important addition to our collection on DigitalNC, as they show what life was like in Surry County, and show us what high school meant to Surry County students. To see more from Surry Community College, check out their partner page, or visit their website.
An excerpt of the John Hunter Family Record, who came to the US from Ireland around 1750.
Over 120 genealogical collections from Surry County have been digitized and added to DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner, Surry Community College. Created and assembled by Luther Byrd, former Elon College professor from Westfield, North Carolina, these collections represent a huge variety of information about different families and their descendants living in Surry County. Many of the collections include documents, papers, newspaper clippings, and personal letters to and from Byrd about the family members.
The coat of arms for the Thrower family, included in the Arrington collection.
Also included are various family records and family tree diagrams, complete with indexes to determine where a given family member is located in the tree. One such example is the Hunter Family Record excerpted above. Looking through these collections, it is fascinating to see the staggering amount of documents and material that these families created and saved throughout the years, as well as the amount of work that Byrd put in to ensure that these collections are all relevant and well-maintained.
These collections represent a growing wealth of information about the history of Surry County. To browse through other materials from Surry Community College, visit their partner page or check out their website.
Photo of a school dance, from the Yadkinian Yearbook, 1964
Just a quick post to let you know that we’ve added 5 more items from Yadkin and Surry Counties, courtesy two members of the Northwestern Regional Library System, Yadkin County Public Library and King Public Library.
as well as
This brings us to more than 100 yearbooks from the Northwestern Regional Library System.
Screenshot from the video “Preparing Foods that were Eaten by our Ancestors” which included women discussing their cooking.
29 oral histories collected in the early 2000s by the African American Historical and Genealogical Association of Surry County are now online thanks to our partner the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History. Thanks also to our colleagues in the Southern Folklife Collection, these audiovisual materials were digitized utilizing funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The interviews are mostly on video and discuss many topics about being Black and growing up in Mount Airy and Surry County area during the first half of the 20th century.
We also scanned many maps and architectural drawings for the museum in this batch and those are available here. The drawings include a lot of buildings around Mount Airy.
To learn more about our partner Mount Airy Museum of Regional History visit their partner page here.
To hear more oral histories on DigitalNC, go here.
We’re pleased to share that you can now search more issues of the Elkin Tribune on DigitalNC, thanks to a nomination from the Elkin Public Library. The years added span 1916-1949, but the majority of the issues are from 1942-1949, with only a few scattered issues from the earlier years.
In the issues added from 1931 you’ll see a lot of coverage of the new Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital, which still operates in Elkin today. The issues from 1942-1949 cover World War II and its immediate aftermath. There are lists of individuals who served from both Surry and Yadkin counties in the May 8, 1945 issue linked at the beginning of this post.
You can view all of the issues we’ve published from The Elkin Tribune on the newspaper’s landing page. To view all of the items we’ve worked on relating to Surry County, check out the county’s landing page.
Thanks to our partner, Surry Community College, yearbooks from Lowgap High School are now available on our website. This batch includes yearbooks from the years 1950, 1951, and 1955 to 1959.
To learn more about the Surry County Public Library, please visit their website.
For more yearbooks from across North Carolina, visit our yearbook collection.
David Wright, Associate Dean, Learning Resources, Surry Community College
This year marks the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center’s 10th anniversary, and to celebrate we’ll be posting 10 stories from 10 stakeholders about how NCDHC has impacted their organizations.
Today’s 10 for 10 Q&A is from David Wright, Associate Dean for Learning Resources at Surry Community College. We’ve partnered with Surry CC (Library home page | NCDHC contributor page) to digitize yearbooks, newspapers, and genealogical collections. Surry CC Library has been active in digitizing a lot of Surry County history, making connections with area groups and institutions to share their history online at Surry County Digital Heritage. Read below for more about our partnership with Surry Community College.
What impact has NCDHC had on your institution and/or on a particular audience that means a lot to you?
NCDHC has been an advocate, a source of information about the process of digitization, and has provided our rural community with the tools to bring a digital history project to fruition. Surry Community College has benefited from the expertise of the NCDHC as well as a partner in digitizing yearbooks from the county. At the beginning of our digital history project, I felt like I had a sounding board (& expertise) in Lisa Gregory and the staff at NCDHC. A project of the size and scope of the Surry County Digital Heritage had not been attempted anywhere in our area. We needed good advice and found it at NCDHC.
Do you have a specific user story (maybe your own!) about how DigitalNC has boosted research or improved access to important information?
The “yearbook project” that NCDHC has helped us bring together is an amazing resource. It has been a lot of footwork and many deliveries and pickups in Chapel Hill, but the libraries in Surry County can refer patrons who inquire about yearbooks to DigitalNC, where all the yearbooks are gathered in one place and are easy to browse and use and not scattered in locations throughout the county. As in many counties, before school consolidation, there were lots of community schools, many that were K-12. This is a valuable resource for genealogists, other family history researchers, and just fun browsing for people who remember the community schools.
If you were asked to “describe what makes NCDHC great” in a few words, what would they be?
A dedicated and helpful staff who want to preserve the historical records of communities.
