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.
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.
In the January 7th, 1898 issue of the Charlotte Daily Observer, we have a story about a little girl who had swallowed a thimble and was saved by a new invention: the x-ray machine. Dr. Henry Louis Smith, a physics professor at Davidson College, was an early pioneer in x-ray technology. Smith’s machine was used in some of the first clinical applications, such as this, and allowed doctors to safely find and remove the foreign object from the ailing girl’s body.
Charlotte Daily Observer, January 7, 1898
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.
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.
A front page from August 1946. News included veterans’ furlough pay, farm credit bills in Congress, and the 20th anniversary of sound in movies
Twenty more years and almost 7000 pages of the Alamance Gleaner have been added to DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner, the Alamance County Public Libraries. Previously, issues of the Gleaner only covered from 1875-1882 and 1911 to 1926, but DigitalNC now includes January 1927 to January 1947. Based out of Alamance County, the Gleaner was published from 1875 through 1956, and it joins other Alamance County newspapers, including the Mebane Leader and the Burlington Twice-A-Week Dispatch.
A July 1927 article about a highway that would eventually become Route 66
The Gleaner was a weekly newspaper based out of Graham that offered local news, national news, international news, and short stories. One story that the Gleaner wrote about in 1927 was a plan to create a highway from Chicago to Los Angeles, thought of as a “Main Street of America”, a stretch that would eventually become Route 66. As time went on, the Gleaner also came to include a comics section, quizzes, and timely updates from the different campaigns in World War II.
With this new increase in pages from the Alamance Gleaner, DigitalNC becomes that much closer to having the entire published history of the newspaper in our collection. To browse other materials from Alamance County, take a look at their partner page, or visit their website.
The following microfilmed newspapers were selected for digitization in 2017-2018. Thanks to supplemental funding from the State Library of North Carolina, we were able to complete more reels than in previous years. Reels were chosen from nominations according to our Criteria for Selecting Newspapers to Digitize from Microfilm.
The Alamance County Public Libraries has just shared issues of the State Dispatch, later known as the Twice-a-Week Dispatch, on DigitalNC. Issues are available from 1908-1915 (with some exceptions).
The tagline of the Dispatch began as “A Republican newspaper devoted to the upbuilding of American homes and American industries,” and later changed to include the word “progressive.” The paper covers Republican events and ideas, as well as local news from Burlington and surrounding areas of Alamance county like Graham and Whitsett. Later issues see the beginnings of World War I.
The Alamance Gleaner’s News Snapshots of the Week for July 9, 1914 included details of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife.
The notice of the Archduke’s assassination published by The Enterprise, The Hickory Democrat, and The Roanoke Beacon.
One hundred years ago, on June 28, 1914, the Archduke of Austria and his wife were assassinated by Gavrilo Princip, a member of the nationalist group Mlada Bosna (Young Bosnia). Many historians cite this incident as one of the first of several events which led to World War I. In commemoration of the war’s centennial, the staff at the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center will post occasional blog entries which examine the way in which the conflict was covered by newspapers across the state. Blog posts will focus in particular on how the war affected communities in North Carolina. Of the newspapers made available online by Digital NC, ten were in print during the war, each published once per week:
July 2 notice of the Archduke’s assassination from The Courier (Asheboro).
The Archduke’s assassination received mention in several of these papers. The Enterprise, The Hickory Democrat, and The Roanoke Beacon all printed the same column, shown above. Since the assassination occurred on a Sunday, the news had time to cross the ocean and reach editors before the weekly editions were published on Thursday and Friday. However, The Alamance Gleaner did not alert their readers to the event until the following week when it was included in the syndicated News Snapshots of the week (see top of post).
Throughout July, tensions in Europe continued to escalate. By the end of the month, Austria-Hungary had declared war on Serbia and in early August, Germany declared war on Russia, France, and Belgium. This led to Britain’s August 4 declaration of war against Germany.
Headline from the July 31 edition of The Carolina Home and Farm and the Eastern Reflector.
With the beginning of open hostilities, the conflict began to receive more attention in North Carolina newspapers. In the edition of July 30, The Alamance Gleaner ran a short column headlined “The War Dogs Aloose in Europe,” asserting, “It is now imminent that all Europe will be involved in a bloody conflict.” On the same day, The Mebane Leader published a column originally printed in The Charlotte Observer in which Serbia is compared to a copperhead snake. The average American may have been unaware of Europe’s rising tensions only a month ago. By the first week of August 1914, the tensions had boiled over into full-blown war, making the situation newsworthy to the citizens of North Carolina.
More than 1,100 issues are now freely available to search and browse. The online issues cover the years 1875-1882 and 1911-1926. The Gleaner aimed a broad audience, including not just local news but stories, poetry, and illustrations from state, national, and international events. The issues from the 1910s and 1920s include increasingly elaborate designs and images, reflective of changing technology and taste in the newspaper business.
Combined with The Mebane Leader, covering some of the same years, researchers interested in Alamance County history and people in the early 20th century will find terrific resources on DigitalNC. The Gleaner was nominated for digitization by Alamance County Public Libraries.
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.
