Digital NC is happy to announce another issue of The Elkin Tribune is digitized online, thanks to our partners at the Western Regional Archives.
This 1914 edition of the paper is a great resource to delve into the local history of Elkin, as it celebrates local businesses, elected officials, and the industrial history of the town – such as the construction of a new railroad and a wooden suspension bridge that once held the title for longest in the world at 210 feet!
To explore other available issues on The Elkin Times on our website, click here. And to explore other North Carolina newspapers, click here!
This week we have another 32 titles up on DigitalNC! Eleven of these papers are from Asheville, including a few with a focus on the organized labor movement.
When people think of North Carolina, unions aren’t typically the first thing that come to mind, which makes sense since the state has the second lowest union representation rate in the country at 2.6%, only beating South Carolina by about 1%. However, in the first half of the 20th century, the labor movement was alive and well, that is until North Carolina officially became a Right-To-Work state in 1947, greatly limiting the power of unions in the state. In the 1950s, the unionization rate was 9% and it has been on the decline ever since.
The Workman, March 30, 1901
The Asheville Banner, July 30, 1931
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.
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.
Back in December, 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 500+ nominated. This year we’ve chosen the following titles and years.
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 2021. 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 2021.
A May 1926 edition of the Mount Airy News. Articles include a local citizen celebrating their 90th birthday and information about Mount Airy High School
Twelve years and over 600 issues of the Mount Airy News have been digitized and added to DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner, Surry Community College. These scans are brand new, with DigitalNC now containing March 1917 through September 1929. While the Mount Airy News is now published six days a week, the newspaper was only published once a week at this point in time. The Mount Airy News services Mount Airy and Surry County, and joins fellow Surry County newspapers including the Chatham Blanketeer and the Elkin Tribune.
An article announcing a meeting between NC Governor Morrison and VA Governor Trinkle
Looking through the Mount Airy News today, we can learn a lot about what concerned the people of Surry County nearly a hundred years ago. In one October, 1922 issue, the main headline was a meeting between North Carolina Governor Cameron Morrison and Virginia Governor Elbert Lee Trinkle to talk about building roads between Mount Airy and the nearby towns of Sparta, NC, and Stuart, VA, sponsored by the Kiwanis Club of Mount Airy. Looking through the pages, we can see praise for local teachers and school board members, an article about local farmers joining a cooperative association, and an editorial piece denouncing women who are uninformed voters, when they recently earned the right to suffrage.
Reading these articles gives us an idea of what life was like in Surry County and Mount Airy at the time, and it is invaluable to us. To browse through other materials from Surry Community College, take a look at their partner page, or check out their website.
More than 500 issues of The Elkin Tribune, a weekly paper published in “The Best Little Town in North Carolina” (according to the paper) are now available online in the North Carolina Newspapers collection.
We have digitized the years 1930 to 1940 from the microfilm, along with a few stray original copies, at the suggestion of the Elkin Public Library. The newspaper is a terrific source of local news and commentary, along with some coverage of national events. The Tribune was an ardent booster of local businesses, frequently encouraging its readers to spend their money in town. The holiday shopping issues published each December are especially interesting (see examples from 1935, 1936, and 1937).
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.
