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M.S. Brown: Miscellaneous Baseball Photos, Image 87
Regular followers of DigitalNC are likely familiar with M.S. Brown and the growing collection of photographs he took around Edgecombe County available on the site. Another batch is now available online, courtesy of our partner, Edgecombe County Memorial Library.
This batch features additions to the pageants, boy scouts, and basketball objects and several new objects including auto wrecks, baseball, and children. One object that some might find interesting contains photos published in the “Home Front News.” Members of the Oxford community published this local newspaper during WWII and shipped it local men serving around the country and abroad. It often featured single women in the area that were interested in writing letters to
soldiers. The set includes many of the proofs that M.S. Brown shot for the paper.
Also completed in this batch are several documents and publications relating to the “Tobacco Perspectives” project. The project consisted of an exhibition of tobacco memorabilia and a series of public forums examining the role of tobacco in Edgecombe County’s economy. Organizers hoped to inspire community discussion about the crop’s harmful effects and the county’s dependency on its growth. DigitalNC is also host to several videos of the discussions.
Tobacco Perspectives Brochure
You can view the new materials relating to “Tobacco Perspectives” at the links below:
Items in this blog post come from the Images of North Carolina Collection and the North Carolina Memory Collection. Check them out for more items like these. To learn more about the Edgecombe County Memorial Library, please visit the contributor page or the website.
Group of Soldiers Posed with Firestone Officials, from the Gaston Museum of Art & History.
This Veterans Day, we thought we’d mention some best bets for finding and searching materials on DigitalNC related to military history. Some time periods and subjects have better representation than others, so we’ve focused on the five wars that have the most related materials. This post has been updated in 2022 to show the most recent systems for our content.
Tip 1: Search by Subject
To isolate materials that are predominantly about a particular war, you can use the subject specific links listed below.
You can use the Advanced Search (see below where to find in the search window) to narrow your search.
Use the Advanced Search to further narrow your query
If you click one of the links above and then go into the Advanced Search, you can use more terms to further narrow your search. Using “partial phrase” is the best option to get the widest set of options that might fit that term. (see the graphic below that illustrates this)
You can also do a full text search that combines (1) your research interest (perhaps a name, a topic, or an event) in conjunction with (2) the name of a particular war. This may yield a lot more results, depending on your research interest, but it could also zero in on your target faster.
Only interested in photographs? Try this search, which is limited to photos that contain the word “military” or “soldiers” as a subject.
Tip 2: Search by Date Range
Another tactic is to search or browse items that were created during a particular war. These don’t always have that war as a subject term, but they often deal with wartime issues or society regardless.
A list of alumni and students killed or missing in action, from the 1944 UNC-Chapel Hill Yackety Yack yearbook, page 12.
Keep in mind that doing a full text search will be ineffective about 98% of the time when it comes to handwritten items on our site, as most do not have transcripts. This is just to let you know that you may need to read through handwritten items pulled up in one of the searches above if you believe they may contain information you’re interested in.
Our partners have shared a lot of yearbooks on DigitalNC and, while they may not be the first thing that comes to mind for military history, many colleges and universities recognized students who served. Especially for the Vietnam, Korean, Gulf, and Afghan wars, yearbooks document campus reactions and protests. You currently can’t search across all of the yearbooks available on DigitalNC; our site has high school yearbooks published up through the late 1960s, and college and university yearbooks and campus publications through 2015.
Tip 3: Newspapers!
Searching the student and community newspapers on DigitalNC can yield biographical information about soldiers, editorials expressing local opinions about America’s military action, as well as news and advertisements related to rationing and resources on the homefront.
The Newspapers Advanced Search is your friend here! You can target papers published during specific years. You can also narrow your search to specific newspaper titles.
Screenshot of the Newspapers Advanced Search page, with the search phrase “Red Cross” and limiting the results to papers published from 1914-1918.
We now have so many military newspapers on our site, we have a whole exhibit dedicated to them, which you can view by going to our Military Newspapers in North Carolina page.
The titles include:
- Air-O-Mech, published by servicemen stationed at Seymour Johnson Field, 1943-1944
- Cloudbuster, published at UNC-Chapel Hill to share news about the Navy pre-flight school held on campus, 1942-1945
- Hot Off the Hoover Rail, published by the community of Lawndale for servicemen from their city, 1942-1945
- The Caduceus, published by the Base Hospital at Camp Greene (Charlotte, N.C.), 1918-1919
- The Caromount, published the community at Caromount Mills in Rocky Mount “solely for the benefit of all former Blumenthal employees now in the service of our country,” 1943-1955 (later years published for the mill community itself rather than those in the military)
- The Home Front News, published by the Tarboro Rotary Club for servicemen from their city, 1943-1945
- Trench and Camp, published by The Charlotte Observer for Camp Greene, 1917-1918
Bonus Resource: Wilson County’s Greatest Generation
One of the largest exhibits on our site is Wilson County’s Greatest Generation, an effort by the Wilson County Historical Association to document the service men and women of Wilson County, North Carolina who served in World War II. Documentation is organized by individual, and includes personal histories, photos, clippings, and other ephemera.
We hope this information can guide you through researching military history on DigitalNC. If you have any of your own tips or questions, please let us know by commenting below or contacting us.
Mothers of Servicemen portraits, May 1945.
Twenty-two issues of The Home Front News are now available on DigitalNC! The Home Front News was a World War II newspaper produced by the Tarboro Rotary Club in Edgecombe County, N.C.. Edgecombe County Memorial Library provided us with issues from March 20, 1943 to the last issue on September 20, 1945.
The newspapers are full of jokes, clever rhymes, and drawings of pin-up girls. Not only did the paper provide entertainment for the soldiers overseas, but it also served as a register for births, marriages, and deaths.
There was even a dedicated Mothers of Service Men issue in May 1945 which featured portraits of over a hundred local mothers dressed in their Sunday best (pictured above). These portraits were taken by M.S. Brown, a Tarboro resident and photographer who owned the Coca-Cola factory. Brown almost always contributed at least one photograph per issue, usually a full page toward the back of the newspaper with a portrait of a community resident and caption. For more photos taken by “Coca-Cola Brown”, view the M.S. Brown Digital Exhibit.
“Now the point is, you won’t get stuck if you pin me up.” From September 20, 1943 issue.
