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

Telephone news from the 1903 Asheboro Courier

To find more local news, check out DigitalNC‘s North Carolina Newspapers Collection and read some 140 character postings from the early 1900s.

Newspaper issues covering 1934 to 1938 of the Rocky Mount Herald are now online through DigitalNC.  The paper, published weekly, focused on both local and national news items, and covered stories include big events such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s election. As Rocky Mount was a major center of tobacco commerce in the eastern part of the state during this period, farming news, particularly as it related to tobacco, is heavily covered.  There are also more light hearted elements to the publication including a comic strip page in each issue, which provide a view into 1930s humor.

The newspaper is part of the Newspaper Digitization Project and was recommended by the Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.).