The Enterprise was published biweekly and focused primarily on community news such as town meetings, citizen’s achievements, deaths, festivals, and more. A frequent feature in issues published during the World War II years are articles highlighting Martin County citizens who joined the war effort and their accomplishments while in the service.
To learn more about Martin Community College, please visit their website.
To view more newspapers from around North Carolina, please click here.
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.
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 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.
Historic issues of The Enterprise, a weekly newspaper from Williamston, N.C., are now available in the North Carolina Newspapers digital collection. More than 2,000 issues have been digitized, covering the years 1901 through 1934.
The Enterprise was a great source for local news, especially items of interest to the farming community. This title was nominated for digitization by the Martin Memorial Public Library (Williamston, N.C.).
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.
