The State Gazette was founded by Abraham Hodge and Andrew Blanchard in 1785. Hodge, born 1755 in the colony of New York, worked as a patriot printer during the American Revolution and even operated George Washington’s traveling press at Valley Forge in 1778. While stationed there, he printed official orders, commissions, and recruitment posters for the Continental Army. Seeking a warmer climate after the war, Hodge relocated to Halifax, N.C., where he would go on to own printing presses in Edenton, Halifax, Fayetteville, and New Bern. In addition to newspapers, he was named printer of the North Carolina General Assembly and printed the state’s laws in 1786. He was also one of the first people to contribute to the library of The University of North Carolina.
March 5, 1795 issue of The State Gazette of North-Carolina. Less than a month after The University of North Carolina opened its doors to students.
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.
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.
With the recent 10 year anniversary of Facebook and various other forms of social media such as Twitter and Instagram becoming increasing ubiquitous in our lives, there are often reports of the end of privacy for everyone. However, if you take a look at newspapers from the late 1800s and early 1900s, you have to wonder when privacy in one’s social life ever existed. As the quote above about Mr. Stewart’s catch from The Danbury Reporter shows, no news was too small to be printed. Newspapers provided a variety of resources for citizens that we now often turn to the internet for, from publishing serials such as Sherlock Holmes, ads from assorted businesses, the weather, train schedules for the day or week, and crop pricing, in addition to the regular news of the day. So it makes sense that the media of the day also was social in nature.
News of those sick in Graham, NC from the Alamance Gleaner in 1911
From the April 27, 1934 Rocky Mount Herald
Small town newspapers in particular had weekly features that described in detail all the goings-on in town, including the very mundane of “Mr. Jones has a cold this week. We wish him well.” Sounds an awful lot like a tweet if you just add in a hashtag or two, “Heard @MrJones has a cold this week. #feelbetter #boosickness!” In towns with just a few hundred people, where everyone likely knew who you were anyways, one’s social network was indeed the whole town and these local news sections provide a recording of what was happening on a weekly basis.
Appeal from Asheboro Courier editors to citizens for news items in 1903
Called a variety of names from “Local News,” “Items of Local Interest,” etc, these sections of the paper were usually a page or two after the main headlines of the day. It is not always obvious who wrote the columns, but some do identify it as being “Club News,” being pulled together by the social women’s clubs in the area. Others, such as the Asheboro Courier pictured above, make appeals from the paper’s editors themselves to send in items to be published. Those with a more social club focus saw such columns as being primarily for women, such as the Rocky Mount Herald, which called their section, “Of Interest to Women.”
Other papers, such as the Forest City Courier and the Elm City Elevator, had a mix of both social and more business items in their local news and called their section, “News Items in and Around Forest City,” and “Personal Paragraphs.”
For those researching the daily lives of people around the turn of the 2oth century, these sections of newspapers can be a rich resource, not only to learn who was sick and who was visiting from out of town, but these sections also contain information about social gatherings in town, such as camp meetings, lectures, and openings of businesses such as mills and restaurants. The newest technology can also come up in the local news items, as the telephone line mention shows below.
Restaurant news in October 9, 1919 Forest City Courier
Issues of The Danbury Reporter from 1872-1945 are now available on DigitalNC. A weekly paper published in Danbury, NC (Stokes County), the Reporter is a mix of local, county and national news, with an emphasis on farming and politics.
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.