Several Yadkin County Home Demonstration Club Scrapbooks, from the collections of the Yadkin County Public Library, are now available online at DigitalNC. The scrapbooks were produced semi-annually by the Yadkin County Home Demonstration Club. The scrapbooks cover the club’s projects and events, and provide a unique snapshot of the social activities of women in rural North Carolina in the 1950s.
Some of the highlights from the 1957 scrapbook include “A Miss and Her Money,” a pamphlet published by the Institute of Life Insurance in 1956 to introduce money management to girls; several pages of recipes for refrigerator jams; rules for hosting and attending a tea party (p. 62); coverage of the annual Dairy Queen beauty contest; and an incredibly thorough treatise on the selection of household linens (p.92). The scrapbook also reports on the Home Demonstration Club’s participation in the Ground Observer Corps, a Cold War era civilian force which used binoculars or the naked eye to search the sky for threats from Soviet and Japanese aircraft (see photo).
Here is a 1956 recipe for Red Raspberry Jam featured on page 114 of the scrapbook:
Ingredients:
- 3 cups finely mashed or sieved red raspberries
- 6 cups sugar
- 1 package powdered pectin
- 1 cup water
Directions:
Combine fruit and sugar. Let stand about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir the pectin into the water, bring to boiling, and boil rapidly for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from stove and let stand at room temperature 24-48 hours or until jelled. Seal with paraffin and store in a freezer. Or it will keep several weeks at refrigerator temperatures. Makes about 6 glasses.
Thanks to funding from the State Library of North Carolina’s LSTA Grant and our partner Yadkin County Public Library, 1,204 issues spanning from 1893 to 1941 of The Yadkin Ripple are now available for viewing on our website. Starting with its first issue in 1892, The Yadkin Ripple has been publishing for over 130 years. While the paper includes national news stories, its main focus is the Yadkin community with articles on local events, community member accomplishments, weddings and deaths of community members, and other interesting articles related to the area such as murder mysteries.
In early January of 1934, The Yadkin Ripple published a story about Leoda “Oda” Mae Childress, a 20 year old woman living with foster parents, Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Tilley, near Benham, North Carolina. On Saturday, December 30, 1933, the family was set to make their usual trip to Elkin, but this time Oda was feeling unwell and decided to stay home. Later in the day, responding to a frantic call from Oda, neighbors Nathan Tharpe and Kelly Brown made their way to the Tilley house. Upon their arrival, they saw that Oda had been shot. Immediately Tharpe checked for signs of life and found that Oda’s heart was beating faintly. He called for a doctor, but by the time Dr. H. C. Salmons arrived Oda had passed away.
After arriving at the Tilley house, authorities noted that there were several signs that a struggle had taken place within the house—drawers were rifled through in multiple areas of the house, a window was smashed, a chair was overturned, and the phone receiver was dangling at the end of its cord. Later, after authorities had finished at the scene, Mrs. Tilley found a note in the pocket of the apron Oda was wearing that Saturday. The note, presumably written by Oda, mentions four men coming to the house who said she had 20 minutes to give them $500 or she would die. Instead of giving the intruders the money, she writes that she instead hides the money in cellar of the family’s tobacco barn. Oda ends the letter by asking Mrs. Tilley to tell her sweetheart Andrew Smoot (who was married to another woman) goodbye and that she wished to be buried in Benham. The note had no signature, but Mr. and Mrs. Tilley verified that it was in Oda’s handwriting and that they had found the cash where she said it would be.
Something felt off to many in the community including The Yadkin Ripple writer Alan Browning, Jr. who voiced his feeling of unease in an article, asking: Why did the intruders allow her to telephone for aid? Why did they allow her to write a lengthy note to Mrs. W. W. Tilley? If the rumor that the note was dictated after she was shot, how would the intruders know about the secret hiding spot for the money? Lastly, if the rumor is true that this was a suicide, why would Oda go through such elaborate preparations before ending her own life? The paper continues for several weeks after the publishing of the initial article to report any new developments in the case to the community.
To read the articles about the Childress case in their entirety and find out what really happened to Oda, begin here.
To learn more about the Yadkin County Public Library, please visit their website.
To view more newspapers from across North Carolina, please click here.
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.
Thanks to our partner, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, new issues from five North Carolina newspapers are available on our website. These include:
There are also new issues of Oxford Public Ledger, courtesy of our partner Granville County Public Library, and The Yadkin Ripple, thanks to Yadkin County Public Library.
To browse all of our newspapers by location, date, and type, take a look at our North Carolina Newspapers 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 300+ nominated. This year we’ve chosen the following titles and years.
| Title |
Years |
Nominating Institution |
| The Alleghany Times / News / Star-Times (Sparta, N.C.) |
1933-1947 |
Alleghany County Public Library |
| The Charlotte Labor Journal and Dixie Farm News (Charlotte, N.C.) |
1939-1953 |
UNC Charlotte |
| The Daily Record (Dunn, N.C.) |
1963-1965 |
Campbell University |
| The Eagle (Cherryville, N.C.) |
1942-1954 |
Cherryville Historical Museum |
| The Highlander (Highlands, N.C.) |
1937-1978 |
Highlands Historical Society |
| The Kings Mountain Herald (Kings Mountain, N.C.) |
1958 |
Mauney Memorial Library |
| North Carolina Catholic (Nazareth, N.C.) |
1946-1968 |
Catholic Diocese of Raleigh |
| The Roanoke News (Weldon, N.C.) |
1923-1944 |
Halifax County Library System |
| The Valdese News (Valdese, N.C.) |
1938-1950 |
Burke County Public Library |
| The Yadkin Ripple (Fort Bend, N.C.) |
1893-1944 |
Yadkin County Public Library |
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 2022.
Students heading to a day of school at Jonesville High School, as featured in the 1956 East Bend Whispers yearbook.
Yearbooks from several libraries in the Northwestern Regional Library System are now online.
From Danbury Public Library, yearbooks from Sandy Ridge High School, Pinnacle High School, Francisco High School, Nancy Reynolds High School, Germanton High School, Walnut Cove High School, and London High School are available.
From Alleghany County Public Library, yearbooks covering 1959-1961 at Sparta High School are online.
From Elkin Public Library The Elk yearbook, from Elkin High School, is now online.
From East Bend Public Library, the town’s scrapbook celebrating their centennial in 1987 is available.
And from Yadkin County Public Library, over 50 yearbooks from East Bend High School, West Yadkin High School, Yadkinville High School, Jonesville High School, and Courtney High School are now online.
To view more materials from across North Carolina, visit DigitalNC.
Scrapbooks and other historic materials from the Northwestern Regional Library system are now available on DigitalNC. The online resources include:
The photographs, clippings, and stories contained in the scrapbooks give us a fascinating glimpse into small-town life in northern North Carolina in the middle of the 20th century.
This week we have another 70 titles up on DigitalNC including over 1,000 issues of The Robesonian, 1,000 issues of The Western Sentinel, 3,000 issues of The Reidsville Review, 4,000 issues of The News and Observer, and almost 4,000 issues of the Salisbury Evening Post!
In the March 8th, 1914 issue of The News and Observers we have an article detailing a practice game played by the Baltimore Orioles while in Fayetteville. This happens to be the game where a 19 year old George Herman “Babe” Ruth hit his first home run as a professional baseball player. Ruth was also given his iconic nickname “Babe” while in Fayetteville on this trip.
The News and Observer, March 8th, 1914
Image via The Fayetteville Observer
Over the next year, we’ll be adding millions of newspaper images to DigitalNC. These images were originally digitized a number of years ago in a partnership with Newspapers.com. That project focused on scanning microfilmed papers published before 1923 held by the North Carolina Collection in Wilson Special Collections Library. While you can currently search all of those pre-1923 issues on Newspapers.com, over the next year we will also make them available in our newspaper database as well. This will allow you to search that content alongside the 2 million pages already on our site – all completely open access and free to use.
This week’s additions include:
Asheboro
Asheville
Belhaven
Brevard
Charlotte
Cherryville
Clayton
Concord
Cooleemee
Creedmoor
Durham
East Bend
Elizabeth City
Forest City
Gastonia
Goldsboro
Greenville
Kenly
Leaksville
Lenoir
Lincolnton
Lumberton
Mocksville
Mooresville
Moravian Falls
New Bern
Raleigh
Red Springs
Reidsville
Rocky Mount
Rutherfordton
Salisbury
Selma
Shelby
Smithfield
Spruce Pines & Burnsville
Statesville
Taylorsville
Washington
Waynesville
Wilmington
Windsor
Winston-Salem
If you want to see all of the newspapers we have available on DigitalNC, you can find them here. Thanks to UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries for permission to and support for adding all of this content as well as the content to come. We also thank the North Caroliniana Society for providing funding to support staff working on this project.
This week we have another 61 titles up on DigitalNC, including our first additions from Charleston, Culler, Red Springs, Rutherfordton, and Sanford! Included in this batch, on the front page of the February 28, 1872 issue of Raleigh’s Weekly Sentinel, is an article detailing the final heist of Robeson County folk hero Henry Berry Lowry.
Portrait thought to be of Henry Berry Lowry. Via the State Archives of North Carolina
Henry Berry Lowry, a Lumbee Native American, was the head of the mostly Native outlaw group known as the Lowry Gang. In addition to typical outlaw activities, the Lowry Gang also helped other Native Americans avoid Confederate work conscription and fought alongside Union soldiers who had escaped Confederate prison camps. While Lowry did often resort to murder to settle personal feuds, he was also considered a sort of Robeson “Robin Hood.” When they committed robberies, they would often share the spoils with the community and would return items such as horses as soon as they were no longer needed. They were known to be “respectful” robbers and would let you off the hook if you could show you didn’t have much.
The Weekly Sentinel, February 28, 1872
In 1869, governor William Holden put a $12,000 bounty on Lowry’s head, which resulted in bloody conflict over the next few years. After successfully evading capture, Lowry planned his final heist in February of 1872. The gang stole a safe from a local carriage manufacturer and were bold enough to take another from the sheriff’s office, walking away with $22,000 (about $520,000 today) and then he disappeared. The bounty was never collected and he was never heard from again. Some locals claim they saw him at a friend’s funeral years later, but we will likely never know what happened to Henry Berry Lowry.
Over the next year, we’ll be adding millions of newspaper images to DigitalNC. These images were originally digitized a number of years ago in a partnership with Newspapers.com. That project focused on scanning microfilmed papers published before 1923 held by the North Carolina Collection in Wilson Special Collections Library. While you can currently search all of those pre-1923 issues on Newspapers.com, over the next year we will also make them available in our newspaper database as well. This will allow you to search that content alongside the 2 million pages already on our site – all completely open access and free to use.
This week’s additions include:
Asheboro
Charleston
Charlotte
Culler
Elizabeth City
Goldsboro
Greensboro
Halifax
Hertford
North Wilkesboro
Oxford
Plymouth
Raleigh
Red Springs
Reidsville
Rockingham
Rutherfordton
Salisbury
Sanford
Shelby
Tarboro
Taylorsville
Wadesboro
Warrenton
Washington
Winston-Salem
If you want to see all of the newspapers we have available on DigitalNC, you can find them here. Thanks to UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries for permission to and support for adding all of this content as well as the content to come. We also thank the North Caroliniana Society for providing funding to support staff working on this project.
This week we have another 34 titles up on DigitalNC! In this batch we have an article from the Durham Tobacco Plant describing the construction of a new factory being built by W. Duke, Sons & Co., which contained a machine that would revolutionize their tobacco business: The Bonsack machine.
Durham Tobacco Plant, July 16, 1884
In 1881, Virginia native James Bonsack created the first industrial cigarette rolling machine, a task that was done meticulously by hand up until this point. Bonsack partnered with W. Duke, Sons & Co. in 1884 and supplied them with one of his machines that could roll 250,000 cigarettes in a single day, the equivalent of 48 employees. While this acquisition would make the Dukes the leading cigarette producer in the country, the automation of the process forced many skilled rollers out of work.
W. Duke, Sons & Co. 1884 factory. Image via opendurham.org
Over the next year, we’ll be adding millions of newspaper images to DigitalNC. These images were originally digitized a number of years ago in a partnership with Newspapers.com. That project focused on scanning microfilmed papers published before 1923 held by the North Carolina Collection in Wilson Special Collections Library. While you can currently search all of those pre-1923 issues on Newspapers.com, over the next year we will also make them available in our newspaper database as well. This will allow you to search that content alongside the 2 million pages already on our site – all completely open access and free to use.
This week’s additions include:
- The North Carolinian (Elizabeth City, N.C.) – 1869-1903
- The Yadkin Valley News (Mt. Airy, N.C.) – 1880-1895
- The Index (Wilkesboro, N.C.) – 1880-1881
- The News Reporter (Whiteville, N.C.) – 1912-1924
- The Montgomery Vidette (Troy, N.C.) – 1886-1891
- The Southern Vidette (Norwood, N.C.) – 1891-1892
- Carter’s Weekly (North Wilkesboro, N.C.) – 1920-1922
- The Alexander County Journal (Taylorsville, N.C.) – 1887-1888
- Washington Progress (Washington, N.C.) – 1892-1913
- The Chronicle (Wilkesboro, N.C.) – 1890-1911
- The Wilson Mirror (Wilson, N.C.) – 1887-1894
- Windsor Public Ledger (Windsor, N.C.) – 1887-1889
- Windsor Ledger (Windsor, N.C.) – 1889-1915
- The Daily Southerner (Tarboro, N.C.) – 1889-1922
- The Carolina Mountaineer and Waynesville Courier (Waynesville, N.C.) – 1917-1923
- Raleigh Christian Advocate (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1914
- The Elizabeth-City Star (Elizabeth City, N.C.) – 1822-1824
- The Elizabeth-City Star and North-Carolina Eastern Intelligencer (Elizabeth City, N.C.) – 1825-1833
- The North-Carolinian (Fayetteville, N.C.) – 1839-1864
- The Greensboro Patriot (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1888
- Durham Tobacco Plant (Durham, N.C.) – 1872-1885
- The Enquirer (Tarboro, N.C.) – 1871-1873
- The Times (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1856-1861
- Halifax Compiler (Halifax, N.C.) – 1818
- Halifax Minerva (Halifax, N.C.) – 1829-1830
- The Edenton Gazette, and North-Carolina Advertiser (Edenton, N.C.) – 1806-1809
- The Edenton Gazette (Edenton, N.C.) – 1809-1813
- The Edenton Gazette, and North-Carolina General Advertiser (Edenton, N.C.) – 1814-1822
- Edenton Gazette (Edenton, N.C.) – 1827-1831
- The N.C. Republican, and Civil Rights Advocate (Weldon, N.C.) – 1884
- The Weldon Patriot (Weldon, N.C.) – 1852-1859
- Railroad Ticket (Weldon, N.C.) – 1881
- The Semi-Weekly State (Weldon, N.C.) – 1867
- Webster’s Weekly (Reidsville, N.C.) – 1881-1916
If you want to see all of the newspapers we have available on DigitalNC, you can find them here. Thanks to UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries for permission to and support for adding all of this content as well as the content to come. We also thank the North Caroliniana Society for providing funding to support staff working on this project.
