Issues of The State’s Voice, published in Dunn, NC from 1933-1935, have been added to DigitalNC. Published by O. J. (Oscar J.) Peterson, this paper is much more of an editorial vehicle than many other papers at the time. The entire front page is devoted to his thoughts on one or more news items or topics of the day. His other interest was in writing informational essays about various parts of the state, like the one in this issue about Orange County and Hillsboro(ugh).
Over the years, Peterson managed a number of newspapers besides The State’s Voice including the Chatham Record, the Sampson Democrat, and the Lumberton Argus. Aligning with the Democratic platform of the time, Peterson expresses strong opinions in his paper about prohibition, public education, and economics. His editorials are so pointed that they are alternatively lauded or criticized in other papers.
In the final issue of the paper, Peterson says: “The publication of the State’s Voice has been an interesting experience, or experiment, in several respects.” The paper was intended to be read statewide, and was launched upon a “highly intellectual basis with a confessed non-public appeal.” He seems to attribute the demise of the paper in part to a lack of intellectuality amongst his subscribers, despite many of them being prominent in the state.
This paper was added on behalf of the Harnett County Public Library. You can view all of the materials contributed to DigitalNC from Harnett County Public Library on their contributor page.
Issues of The Sampson Independent newspaper from 1924-1928 are now on DigitalNC. This joins several other earlier titles from Sampson County but these are the first from this time period. The Independent was published in Clinton, N.C.
Issues from early 1925 include a sketch and proposed floor plan for a new county home. County homes were places paid for by the local government. People could or were often forced to live in county homes when they did not have enough money to support themselves, were unable to care for themselves, had severe illnesses, or were otherwise judged to need supervised housing. The floor plan, above, shows a building segregated by race, with separate hospital wards, bathrooms, kitchens, and dining rooms. Not featured in the plan are “tubercular wards” for tuberculosis patients, which the article beneath the sketch said would be built nearby. I couldn’t find an announcement of the opening of the county home but an article on the front page from December 10, 1925 talks about furnishings being purchased and says “it is thought that they [residents] will occupy their new quarters within a few days.”
Sampson Independent July 8, 1924 page 8
The Independent issues include a good mix of syndicated and local content. Local and personal pages like this one, found towards the middle and back of the paper, are particularly long. They list families hosting visitors, residents traveling abroad, and even news about found pets like the article at right. There are separate columns for news particular to Autryville, Boykins Bridge, Keener, Lower Johnston, Mary’s Chapel, Mingo, Mt. Vernon, Owen Grove, Roseboro, Rosin Hill, Spell Town, and illiams Mill.
You can view all of the issues we have online for The Sampson Independenthere, and find links to all of our Sampson County newspapers on this page.
This week we have another 34 titles up on DigitalNC! While this batch focuses heavily on newspapers from Hendersonville, Goldsboro, and Greensboro, it also includes Fayetteville, Henderson, Albemarle, Clinton, Burlington, and our first addition from Bush Hill. Bush Hill (renamed Archdale in 1886) was home to the Annie Florence Petty, who was the first professionally educated and trained librarian in the state of North Carolina. Petty (born 1871) was a founding member of the North Carolina Library Association and, in keeping with her Quaker upbringing, she was also the first secretary of the North Carolina Friends Historical Society. After her prosperous, four-decade long career building the library at the North Carolina State Normal and Industrial School (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro) and other libraries across the state, she retired in 1933 and moved into the family home she shared with her equally successful, chemist sister, Mary Petty.
Mary (left) and Annie Petty in 1952. Image via uncghistory.blogspot.com
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.
This week we have another 34 newspaper titles up on DigitalNC, including four from Carthage, North Carolina: Former home to the Tyson & Jones Buggy Company.
The “Jones” of the Tyson & Jones Buggy Company was William T. Jones, who was born into slavery and became one of the most well-respected and wealthiest businessmen in Carthage. Born near Elizabethtown in 1833, his father was a plantation owner and his mother was an enslaved person. Prior to the Civil War, he was given his freedom and moved to Fayetteville to work as a painter for a carriage company. It was there that his work was noticed by Thomas Tyson, who convinced him to come to Carthage to work for his fledgling operation in 1857, and by 1859 Jones was made a partner in that company. In 1861, Jones joined the Confederate Army and was subsequently captured by Union forces. While imprisoned at Fort Delaware, Jones began making moonshine from potato peelings and bread crusts and selling it to the Union guards. After Sherman’s March left much of the area devastated, it was the Jones’ moonshine money that allowed the Tyson & Jones Buggy Company to restart production, employing many struggling locals and helping to restart the local economy.
Even though Jones was a captain of industry, North Carolina House of Representatives candidate, and Sunday School teacher with a legacy that lives on in Carthage, it was not widely acknowledged that he wasn’t White. It wasn’t until recently that him being a Black man was recognized as fact and his full story was told.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
