Thanks to funding from the State Library of North Carolina’s LSTA Grant and our partner, Halifax County Library System, new issues of The Roanoke News from 1923 to 1944 are now available on our website. This expands our current holding of the paper from 1878 to 1944. The paper, published weekly, primarily features articles on local, North Carolina news such as the completion of the Wright Memorial Bridge.

Wright Bridge Open to Public, April 1931.

Prior to 1931, individuals looking to visit North Carolina’s Outer Banks, or those wishing to visit Dare’s county seat in Manteo, would have had a rather long trip ahead of them. In 1921, the General Assembly passed a $50 million bond issue that was to be used for improving and paving roads that would connect county seats. In addition to these new roads, several concrete bridges were constructed that shortened the distance between places significantly. One of the bridges constructed under the bond was the Wright Memorial Bridge. In April of 1931, the Wright Memorial Bridge was finally opened to the public after 10 years of construction. The bridge spans the entire three mile width across Currituck Sound, connecting Point Harbor to the Outer Banks. The bridge still enjoys heavy usage almost 100 years later.

To learn more about the Halifax County Library System, please visit their website.

To view more newspapers from across North Carolina, please click here.

This week we have 40 more titles on DigitalNC from all across North Carolina! Most of these papers are from Raleigh (such as the long-running Raleigh Evening Times and the Methodist Episcopal paper Raleigh Christian Advocate) as well as many papers from smaller communities. We have Rich Square’s Roanoke-Chowan Times, The Warrenton Gazette from Warrenton, The Roanoke News from Weldon, and Richmond County’s Rockingham Rocket. Whether it’s marriage announcements, classifieds for lost pets, or local elections where the winner barely reaches 100 votes, these newspapers give a glimpse into what small town life in North Carolina was like over a hundred years ago.

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 Southern Home (Charlotte, N.C.) – 1870-1881
• The Tarborough Southerner (Tarboro, N.C.) – 1877-1910
• Warrenton Gazette (Warrenton, N.C.) – 1872-1897
• The Record (Warrenton, N.C.) – 1892-1912
• Roanoke-Chowan Times (Rich Square, N.C.) – 1907-1926
• The Daily Tobacco Plant (Durham, N.C.) – 1888
• The Tobacco Plant (Durham, N.C.) – 1889
• The Times-Mercury (Hickory, N.C.) – 1899-1912
• Rockingham Post-Dispatch (Rockingham, N.C.) – 1923-1924
• Rockingham Rocket (Rockingham, N.C.) – 1888-1890
• Salisbury Daily Sun (Salisbury, N.C.) – 1897-1904
• Salisbury Evening Sun (Salisbury, N.C.) – 1904-1905
• The Salisbury Truth (Salisbury, N.C.) – 1900
• The Salisbury Semi-Weekly Truth-Index (Salisbury, N.C.) – 1900-1903
• Salisbury Daily Truth-Index (Salisbury, N.C.) – 1900
• The Statesville Sentinel (Statesville, N.C.) – 1909-1922
• The Roanoke News (Weldon, N.C.) – 1878-1922
• The Carolina Era (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1871-1872
• Tri-Weekly Constitution (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1876
• The Weekly Constitution (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1876
• Daily Constitution (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1875-1876
• North-Carolina Constitutionalist and Peoples’ Advocate (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1832-1833
• The Weekly North Carolinian (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1868
• The North Carolinian (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1868
• The Raleigh News (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1876-1877
• The Raleigh Weekly News (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1878-1880
• Blasting-Powder for Democrats and Conservatives (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1872
• Southern Illustrated Age (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1875
• The Episcopal Methodist (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1867-1868
• Raleigh Episcopal Methodist (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1869-1870
• Raleigh Christian Advocate (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1894-1899
• Daily Examiner (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1874
• The Raleigh Evening Visitor (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1890
• The Daily Evening Visitor (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1890-1894
• The Raleigh Evening Times (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1905-1906
• The Raleigh Daily Times (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1912
• The Raleigh Daily Tribune (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1897
• The Sentinel (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1866-1867
• The Union Herald (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1919-1922
• Raleigh Weekly Telegram (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1871

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.