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Moore County Papers from 1923-1940 Feature Golf News and … Screen Beans?

Masthead with the title Pinehurst Outlook and black and white illustrations of people playing sports or and socializing
Masthead from the April 12, 1940 issue of The Pinehurst Outlook

Thanks to funding from the Moore County Genealogical Society a variety of Moore County newspapers dating from 1923-1939 have just been added to DigitalNC. The titles include:

The Pinehurst Outlook is more like a magazine. It almost exclusively covers golf and news from other sports. It’s a handsome paper with custom mastheads and covers and a lot of photos, all reflective of the wealth brought to Pinehurst as a renowned golf destination and resort town. The Pinehurst Daily Press (which continues as the Sandhills News-Press) also heavily features sports news. Articles about PGA (Professional Golfers’ Association) tournaments, a listing of daily golf tee times, and updates on local golfers’ careers are some of the news items frequently included. The Moore County News is a paper covering broader local topics and a lot of syndicated content. There’s agriculture news like the “Annual Dewberry Special” issue. (A dewberry is similar to a blackberry.) Social and business news from Aberdeen, Carthage, and Cameron can be found as well.

One fun find was an article about a Moore County pastor named Rev. Wade C. Smith who created simple comics to illustrate Christian principles to his pupils. Dubbed “Litte Jetts,” the figures in the comics look a lot like Screen Beans, ubiquitous stick figures found in Microsoft clip art from the mid 1990s to around 2014. This article from the March 12, 1931 issue of The Moore County News talks about Smith’s work and its popularity, and includes the comic below.

Black and white stick figures acting out Biblical story of Cain and Abel under headline "Those Famous 'Little Jetts'"
The Moore County News March 12, 1931

Here’s another comic I could locate, from March 19, 1931. I’ve added a Screen Bean to the right for comparison.

Black and white stick figures acting out carrying a heavy bag under title "Another Little Jett" with additional running black and white stick figure to the right
The Moore County News March 19, 1931

To view more Moore County newspapers as well as other materials documenting that area visit the county page.


80 Newspaper titles added to DigitalNC this week!

Header for April 1891 issue of Raleigh, N.C. newspaper The Golden Visitor

This week we have an astounding 80 titles up on DigitalNC! These papers span all across the state, covering 22 of North Carolina’s 100 counties! We have papers from smaller communities, like The Free Press from the town of Forest City (Fun fact: Forest City was originally named “Burnt Chimney” after a house that burned own in the area, leaving only a charred chimney behind). We also have well-established papers from Raleigh, such as The Raleigh Times and Evening Visitor, giving us a cross section of the entire state.

Header for the September 3, 1857 issue of Raleigh paper The Live Giraffe

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:

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.


32 Titles now up on DigitalNC!

Header from July 1, 1887 issue of Kernersville, N.C. newspaper "The Southern Home"

Another 32 newspaper titles are up on DigitalNC this week! Three of these titles are from North Carolina towns that either changed their names or just don’t exist anymore.

First, we have the North Carolina National from Company Shops, North Carolina. Company Shops was a community formed around the railroad car construction and maintenance industry in Alamance County, between Graham and Gibsonville. Due to growing anti-railroad sentiments, the community of Company Shops decided to appoint a committee to change the name of the town in 1887. This committee decided on the name ‘Burlington.’

Next up is Our Home from Beaver Dam, North Carolina. It’s hard to determine exactly where Beaver Dam would have been, but knowing that the paper is from Union County, it seems possible that it was located near Beaverdam Creek, just south of Wingate and Marshville, North Carolina.

Lastly, we have The Hokeville Express from what was once known as Hokeville, or ‘Lincoln Factory,’ North Carolina. It seems likely that the community was named after the affluent Hoke family of Lincolnton. Col. John Hoke was one of the owners of the profitable Lincoln Cotton Mills. Col. Hoke died in 1845 and passed ownership on to his son, also named John Hoke. The factory burned down in 1862, and the following year the Confederate Army began constructing a laboratory on the site to manufacture medicines, such as ether, chloroform, and opiates. Since then the community has gone by the name ‘Laboratory.’

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:

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.

 


35 Newspaper titles added to DigitalNC!

Header from the 1858 Buffalo Springs, N.C. handwritten newspaper The Nation

This week we have added issues from 35 different newspaper titles! One of the titles we have is a paper from the now non-existent town of Buffalo Springs, North Carolina. According to this News & Record article, the Harnett County town ceased to exist when the turpentine industry in the area died out. But the intriguing thing about these papers isn’t the ghost of this town, it’s the man who wrote them: John McLean Harrington. Professor and author Michael Ray Smith penned this fascinating paper about Harrington and his newspapers, in which he writes: “Shortly before the Civil War, the son of an affluent Southern family began a journalism career unlike any in his community, his state, or even the nation and produced 305 handwritten newspapers, perhaps the greatest single output of handwritten newspapers by any American journalist.” Harrington had a subscription list of roughly 100 people and would painstakingly copy each individual paper by hand, even though printing presses were widely available at the time. In 1858, when Harrington was writing issues of The Nation, he was only 19 years old. The young man’s ambitions didn’t stop with just being a journalist. He also apparently worked as a bookkeeper, surveyor, educator, sheriff, and postmaster in Harnett County. While his accomplishments were quite impressive, he was also a man of contradiction. Smith writes this of the rural Renaissance man: “He talked of a partner but never revealed the colleague’s identity—if he indeed had one. He discussed the evil of drinking but died an alcoholic. He served as a member of the Confederate militia only to swear an oath that he would always remain a loyal Unionist. Perhaps Harrington tended to do or say whatever was expedient or expected at the time. Maybe he was himself just conflicted in numerous ways.”

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:

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.

 


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