Browse through this weekly paper to see the happenings of Boone over half a century ago! Weekly marriage announcements, birth announcements, and obituaries are sure to make this a rich resource for any genealogist, especially due to text-searchable pages.
Plus, who doesn’t want to fantasize about grocery prices being this cheap again:
Founded in 1888, the Watauga Democrat still reports on local news today. Check out their website here! To explore other issues of the Watauga Democrat on Digital NC, click here. And to search through other North Carolina newspapers in our collection, click here.
Watauga County, much like the rest of Appalachian American, has a rich history of old-time music and two of the most prominent musicians from the area were Doc Watson and Frank Proffitt. In these 1964 and 1965 issues of Boone’s Watauga Democrat, we have many articles celebrating their lives and achievements.
Doc Watson and Son, Merle October 15, 1964
Arthel “Doc” Watson (March 3, 1923-May 19, 2012) hails from the small community of Deep Gap, which is about 10 miles east of Boone, and was one of nine children. Despite being blind since infancy, Watson learned to play a variety of instruments at a young age including guitar, banjo, harmonica, and fiddle. By the time of his death Doc had won an astounding seven Grammys but he didn’t release his first solo recording until 1964, at the age of 41. His eponymous debut includes a version of the song Frank Proffitt made famous, Tom Dooley (or Dula), and the two were both featured on the bill for the 1964 Newport Folk Festival.
Frank Proffitt was born June 1, 1913 and would pass away a year after his Newport encounter with Watson on November 24, 1965. Proffitt resided in the north-west portion of Watauga County in Reese, North Carolina and crafted his own instruments in addition to mastering them. In 1937, folklorists Anne and Frank Warner travelled to Western North Carolina, recorded Proffitt’s version of the murder ballad Tom Dula(story told in detail here by our own Sophie Hollis) and passed it on to Alan Lomax. This version would make it into Lomax’s book Folk Song U.S.A. and became a hit in 1958 when the Kingston Trio released a cover titled Tom Dooley. This would greatly increase Proffitt’s popularity as an American folk singer and he would even go on to represent North Carolina at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.
This week we have another 30 newspaper titles up on DigitalNC! In the September 3, 1891 issue of Boone’s Watauga Democrat we have an article describing the terrible train wreck of Bostian’s Bridge in Statesville. This fatal accident sparked a legendary North Carolina ghost story, but perhaps even scarier are the boogeymen railroad companies would often create to avoid accountability: train wreckers.
Watauga Democrat, September 3, 1891
News and Observer, July 7, 1898
By 1891 the railroad system in America had exploded, allowing for easier cross-country travel and bringing with it fresh new paranoia about disasters and scary strangers coming to your town. Blaming a wreck on some shady character was a lot easier than paying a fortune on settlements due to negligence. Almost immediately after the August 27, 1891 accident, the Richmond & Danville Railroad Company put out ads offering a $10,000 reward for the apprehension of the perpetrator, leading to many being accused and arrested (conveniently with the help of a railroad detective).
News & Observer, September 4, 1891
Greensboro Workman, September 16, 1891
Asheville Citizen, October 15, 1891
Wilmington Messenger, February 3, 1892
News & Observer, August 29, 1897
Durham Daily Globe, September 26, 1891
The editor at Statesville’s Landmark provides us with an incredibly detailed account of the accident and the recovery effort, complete with interviews from survivors and witnesses where they describe rotten cross-ties and rail workers throwing this evidence into the creek below the bridge. Many of those interviewed make a point to mention that there were no signs of robbery after the crash, which doesn’t exactly support the idea of this being some dastardly deed by a bandit.
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 NDNP is a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress with the intention of creating a vast, searchable database of newspapers and other historical documents. You can currently search all of the NDNP issues on the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America website. Those same issues will be available on our newspaper database, allowing you to search that content alongside the other papers on DigitalNC. The week’s titles are the following:
This concludes the list of newspapers that we are sharing from the NDNP. 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 language lab at Appalachian State Teachers College shown in the December 29, 1960 issue.
More than a decade of the Watauga Deomcrat has been added to DigitalNC courtesy of our partner, the Watauga County Public Library. Started in 1888 and still operating today, the Wautaga Democrat is published in Boone N.C., and serves Western North Carolina. This batch covers the years 1950-1963 and joins previously digitized issues spanning 1923-1949.
According to the Watuga Democrat’s website, the paper began as a political newspaper with a mission to be “the voice of the Watauga Democrat Party,” but quickly evolved into a non-partisan publication. The paper covers local, state, and national news. Many of the stories in the newly digitized issues concern Appalachian State Teacher’s College, which became Appalachian State University in 1967.
You can see more materials from our partner the Watauga County Public Library by taking a look at their DigitalNC partner page or by visiting their website. To see more community newspapers from many counties in North Carolina, please visit the North Carolina Newspapers Collection.
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.
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.
