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Donald Ross in Pinehurst, 1935 [Tufts Archives (Pinehurst, N.C.)]
At the center of all research on Pinehurst history is the Tufts Archives. Located in the Givens Memorial Library in the village of Pinehurst, the Tufts Archives is home to photographs, manuscripts, and artifacts related to the history of the town of Pinehurst. It is especially strong in the establishment of golf in the region, with papers of the legendary course designer Donald Ross. Yesterday’s New York Times had a feature on the renovation of the famed Pinehurst No. 2 golf course and talked about the importance of the Tufts Archives in determining the original condition of the course.
The Digital Heritage Center has worked with the Tufts Archives to digitize and share online a small selection of historic photos from the collection. These include images of prominent golfers in Pinehurst, including Bobby Jones, Walter Hagen, Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, and a young Jack Nicklaus.
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he Center has also digitized early issues of The Pinehurst Outlook, a weekly paper that started publication in 1897, just as the town was being developed as a resort community. One of the earliest mentions I found of golf in the paper was an article from February 18, 1898, announcing the completion of the first golf course in Pinehurst, a nine-hole course modeled after the famed St. Andrews course in Scotland. The course included “a thick growth of rye” which was kept short by a flock of sheep.
These early issues of the Outlook also include many mentions of Donald Ross, who was at the time not known as a designer but simply as an accomplished golfer available for lessons. The paper reported on Ross’s ongoing improvements to the courses and the steadily growing interest in golf in Pinehurst.
Also available on DigitalNC are more than 20 years of issues of The Pilot, from the neighboring community of Southern Pines. The Pilot has always done a terrific job covering the local community and these early issues include many articles about golf in the region.
Keep up with the Digital Heritage Center on Twitter where we’ll share more highlights from Pinehurst history this week and next.
This Friday the 13th you’d be hard pressed to do more to ward off ill luck than this golfer, who took a string of horseshoes and not just a rabbit’s foot but an actual live rabbit out on the course with him.
Tomorrow night (Nov. 17) at the Southern Pines Public Library, the Family Fun Night program will feature a talk on Amelia Earhart.
Amelia Earhart and Lloyd Yost at Pinehurst Airport
The pioneering pilot was one of many prominent visitors to Southern Pines and Pinehurst in the early 20th century. There’s a nice photo on DigitalNC.org of Amelia Earhart in 1931, from the collections of the Tufts Archives (Pinehurst, N.C.).
That photo was probably taken when Earhart flew in to Southern Pines for a brief stop. Her visit was featured on the front page of The Pilot from November 13, 1931.
The paper included a short description of her visit:
“Amelia Earhart (Mrs. George Palmer Putnam), who flew across the Atlantic in June, 1928 and who since then has continued to be prominently identified with aviation, was greeted by a crowd which numbered well over 1,000 persons on her first visit to the Sandhills Wednesday afternoon. Miss Earhart brought her plane gracefully down on the Knollwood flying field, rose up in the cockpit and apologized for being late. She was greeted by officials of the field, the Mayor and Commissioners of Southern Pines, representatives of Pinehurst, and by Mrs. W. C. Arkell, wife of the vice-president of the Beechnut Packing Company, sponsors of her acquaintance trip around the country. The trans-Atlantic flier flew here from Fayetteville, spent about 25 minutes at the field, shook hands with scores of people, gave her autograph to numerous small boys and girls, supervised the refueling of her weird looking autogiro, took the ship almost vertically into the air and departed.”
Football season is in full swing, a good time to browse the many football-related images on DigitalNC. I found 49 football-related images in the Images of North Carolina collection, and there are countless more in the college and university yearbooks. Here are some of my favorites:
This photo shows the Davidson College football team in 1906, just 18 years after the first collegiate football game was played in North Carolina.
The action shot of a punter seems to be a popular subject for sports photographers. The photo at top is from the Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.); the one at bottom is from the Tufts Archives (Pinehurst, N.C.).
There are several good photos of high school football players and teams on DigitalNC. The top one here shows a player from Lansing High School in Ashe County; the one in the middle of the team from Davie County High School in 1961, and the photo at bottom shows the team from Waynesville Township High School in 1927.
These last three images above are shared by Ashe County Public Library (top), Davie County Public Library (middle), and Haywood County Public Library (bottom).
We’ve just added a new batch of images from the Tufts Archives (Pinehurst, N.C.). These photos showcase the sporting and social life of Pinehurst in the first part of the 20th century, and include several more great images of golf and golfers.
The quality of the photographs themselves is especially striking. I like these three action shots from equestrian competitions.
It’s St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday for which many people don something green to mark the occasion. This photograph, from the Tufts Archives (Pinehurst, N.C.), depicts a St. Patrick’s Day costume party attendee who, in 1931, took the tradition very seriously – literally bedecking himself in green by dressing up as the ‘Pinehurst Greenhouse’.
New photographs from the Tufts Archives (Pinehurst, N.C.) featuring professional and amateur golfers are now available on DigitalNC. These photographs bear witness to Pinehurst’s prominence as a mecca for golf enthusiasts during the early part of the twentieth century, and depict legendary figures such as Sam Snead, Bobby Jones, Glenna Collett Vare, Jack Nicklaus, and Peggy Kirk Bell.
But while Pinehurst may be best known for golf, other photographs show a lot of other activity happening there as well, including horse racing, boxing matches, dog shows, archery, costume balls, and more. There’s even a picture of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his wooden companion, Charlie McCarthy.
