Thanks to our partner Tyrrell County Public Library, a 1949 yearbook from Tyrrell County Training School and 4 yearbooks covering 1975-1978 from Columbia High School are now online. The 1949 yearbook is the first online from Tyrrell County Training School, which served the African American community of Tyrrell County during segregation.
The staff at Tyrrell County Training School in 1949
Student organizations at Tyrrell County Training School in 1949
To view more yearbooks from across North Carolina, visit our North Carolina Yearbooks section. To learn more about Tyrrell County Public Library, visit their website here.
Thanks to our new partner, the Tyrrell County Public Library, several issues of The Tyrrell County Herald are now available on our website. These issues are from the years 1928-1929 and 1944-1945. The papers mostly recount local news in the county, with a few reports on major national and international events.
All of the newspaper issues from the years 1944-1945 are dedicated to “Tyrrell County Men in the Military Service,” as a result of the country’s involvement in World War II. Each paper includes a listing of citizens who were wounded, taken prisoner, or killed in action during their military service. Several issues from this period also include a section called “Service Men Write”, in which citizens serving in the military were encouraged to write to the paper and these letters were then published for the paper’s readers to see. Most of the messages include thanks from the servicemen for the issues of the paper that they are able to read and how they remind them of home.
Front page of the May 1945 issue of The Tyrrell Times.
A few of these issues report on national and international events and issues that might be familiar to those familiar with 1940s history. The May 1945 issue reports on the celebration of V-E (Victory in Europe) Day, marking the end of the World War II conflict in Europe. The August 1944 issue reports that schools were deciding when to open based on the polio epidemic, in an interesting parallel to current events.
The front page of the August 1944 issue of the The Tyrrell Times.
For more information about the Tyrrell County Public Library, visit their website.
Thanks to the staff at the Outer Banks History Center, we now have a complete run of the 1941 Tyrrell Tribune available online. These papers were scanned at our office in Elizabeth City.
Search results showing the 1941 front pages let you easily see which issues are from microfilm and which from print.
North Carolina has an astounding amount of newspaper on microfilm thanks to efforts of the State Archives, newspaper publishers, local libraries, and other cultural heritage institutions. One thing we really love to do is use DigitalNC to join together microfilmed issues with print issues that have never been microfilmed. The Tyrrell Tribune is one of these cases.
For us, digitizing from microfilm is more cost-effective than digitizing from print. In addition, many papers that were microfilmed were disposed of when organizations were unable to afford storage and care. Microfilmed copies may be the only versions still available. However, there are cases where print issues held by our partners fill in for what was never microfilmed and the 1941 Tyrrell Tribune is a great example.
Published out of Columbia, N.C., the Tribune covers news about local government, coastal industry, agriculture, and events. You can see all of the issues that we have available from the Tribune here. All items we’ve scanned for the Outer Banks History Center are available through their contributor page. Everything we have about Tyrrell County can be found on the Tyrrell County page.
Thanks to our partner, Tyrrell County Public Library, two batches of materials from Tyrrell and Columbia High School are now available on our website. The first batch features Tyrrell High School’s 1961 yearbook as well as the 1977 edition of Columbia High School’s Swamproots. Filling in gaps from our website, five new Columbia High School yearbooks from the years 1959, 1960, 1965, 1968, and 1972 are included in the second batch.
The Melowtones and Elowettes
Homecoming Queens Vicki Jones and Janet Walker
For more information about the Tyrrell County Pubic Library, please visit their website.
To view our 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.
Thanks to our partner, Tyrrell County Public Library, a batch of yearbooks from two Tyrrell County high schools are now available on our website. This batch includes yearbooks from Columbia High School and African American high school, Tyrrell High School, spanning from 1941 to 1962.
Columbia High School
Tyrrell High School
Columbia High School’s 1954 yearbook freshmen title page with an image that shows a student walking the plank with the tempestuous seas of high school below.
For more information about the Tyrrell County Pubic Library, please visit their website.
For more yearbooks from across North Carolina, visit our yearbook collection.
Thanks to our partner, the Tyrrell County Public Library, several issues of The Tyrrell County Tribune are now available on our website. These issues are from the years 1939-1941 and include local news from Tyrrell County and the surrounding area.
The front page of the December 14, 1939 issue of the Tyrrell Tribune.
One interesting news story from the September 11, 1941 edition of the paper is the discussion of a possible state park being created at Cape Hatteras. Today, the Cape Hatteras National Seashore is run by the National Park Service. The park was established as the first national seashore in 1953. In the same issue, one headline reports the expansion of an airport at Manteo that would be the largest on the Carolina coast.
The front page of the September 11, 1941 issue of the Tyrrell Tribune.
For more information on the Tyrrell County Public Library, visit their website.
Seven yearbooks from Columbia High School in Columbia, NC are now online, thanks to our partner Tyrrell County Public Library. The yearbooks, which cover several years in the 1960s, help to fill out the set from Columbia already on DigitalNC, with now almost a full set running from 1947 to 1972.
1964 yearbook cover
1966 yearbook cover
1967 yearbook cover
To learn more about Tyrrell County Public Library, please visit their partner page. To view more yearbooks, visit our North Carolina Yearbooks Collection.
Thanks to our partner, Tyrrell County Public Library, the 1956 and 1957 issues of the Columbia High School yearbook are now available on our website.
Last will and testament page from the 1956 Columbia High School yearbook.
For more information about the Tyrrell County Pubic Library, please visit their website.
For more yearbooks from across North Carolina, visit our yearbook collection.
Back in August, we announced our annual call for microfilmed newspaper digitization. We asked institutions throughout North Carolina to nominate papers they’d like to see added to DigitalNC. As it is every year, it was an incredibly tough choice – we are typically able to choose between 40-60 reels out of over a thousand nominated. This year we’ve chosen the following titles and years.
| Title |
Years |
Nominating Institution |
| Black Mountain News |
1945-1948 |
Swannanoa Valley Museum |
| Carolinian (Raleigh) |
1959-1972 |
Olivia Raney Local History Library |
| Dunn Daily Record |
1950-1962 |
Dunn History Musem |
| Eastern Carolina News |
1898 |
Trenton Public Library / Neuse Regional Library |
| Goldsboro News |
1923-1927 |
Wayne County Public Library |
| Tryon Daily Bulletin |
1928-1942 |
Polk County Public Libraries |
| Tyrrell County Herald/Progress/Times |
1928; 1944-1945 |
Tyrrell County Library |
| Tyrrell Tribune |
1939-1941 |
Tyrrell County Library |
| Zebulon Record |
1925-1956 |
Little River Historical Society |
For our selection criteria, we prioritize newspapers that document underrepresented communities, new titles, papers that come from a county that currently has little representation on DigitalNC, and papers nominated by new partners. After selection, we ask the partners to secure permission for digitization and, if that’s successful, they make it into the final list above.
We hope to have these titles coming online in the first half of 2020. If your title didn’t make it this year don’t despair! We welcome repeat submissions, and plan on sending out another call in Fall 2020.
From the 1960 Quarterian, Swan Quarter’s High School Yearbook
Today we’re highlighting recently added yearbooks from a number of eastern North Carolina high schools from the 1940s to early 1960s. We lack a lot of yearbooks from the easternmost counties in North Carolina so it’s always a pleasure to add more. This batch includes a range of schools in a variety of counties:
Beaufort County
Chowan County
Dare County
Hyde County
Tyrrell County
Washington County
These yearbooks were contributed for digitization from a private individual, and the Outer Banks History Center is acting as contributor. Take a look at other high school yearbooks from the Outer Banks and nearby counties on our high school yearbooks page.
