Viewing search results for "https://www.digitalnc.org/newspapers/wilmington-journal-wilmington-n-c/"
View All Posts
This week we have another 40 newspaper titles and thousands of issues up on DigitalNC, including over 1,000 issues from The Messenger and Intelligencer from Wadesboro, the birthplace of Piedmont blues musician Blind Boy Fuller (read a brief biography about Fuller here). In this post we have some interesting new information regarding the blues legend’s birth!
Via John Edwards Memorial Foundation Records (PF-20001), Southern Folklife Collection, Wilson Library
Blind Boy Fuller was born Fulton Allen to parents Calvin Allen and Mary Jane Walker in Wadesboro, North Carolina, but the actual date of his birth is very much up for debate. The date of July 10 seems to be generally agreed upon, but the actual year tends to differ. While there are some sources that put it at 1904, folklorist Bruce Bastin puts Allen’s date of birth at July 10, 1907 based on statements from the North Carolina State Commission for the Blind, the Social Security Board, and the Durham County Welfare records. However, his 1941 death certificate states that he was 32 years old when he died, putting the year of his birth at 1908.
Rockingham Post-Dispatch, July 28, 1921
What we found makes things a little interesting. After the family relocated to Rockingham sometime in the early 1900s, his father posted a notice in the July 28, 1921 issue of the Rockingham Post-Dispatch that would suggest that none of these are accurate. The notice supports the idea of a July birthday but implies that, being 16 years old, he would have actually been born in 1905.
Bruce Bastin is the author of Red River Blues: The Blues Tradition in the Southeast and Early Masters of American Blues Guitar: Blind Boy Fuller with Stefan Grossman. The Bruce Bastin and Stefan Grossman Collections are housed here at UNC as part of the Southern Folklife Collection.
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.
This week’s additions include:
Charlotte
Edenton
Greensboro
High Point
Lexington
Milton
New Bern
Raleigh
Rocky Mount
Salem
Salisbury
Wadesboro
Wilmington
Winston
Winston-Salem
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 are sharing the second installment of titles on DigitalNC that were brought to us by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) in a cooperative effort with the North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries.
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:
- Watauga Democrat (Boone, N.C.) – 1888-1934
- Carolina Watchman (Salisbury, N.C.) – 1931-1937
- The Tarborough Southerner (Tarboro, N.C.) – 1848-1876
- The Charlotte Democrat (Charlotte, N.C.) – 1853-1887
- Weekly Standard (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1836-1858
- Marion Progress (Marion, N.C.) – 1930-1931
- The News and Views (Jacksonville, N.C.) – 1942-1952
- Fisherman & Farmer (Edenton, N.C.) – 1889-1901
- The Farmer and Mechanic (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1877-1915
- The Free Press (Southern Pines, N.C.) – 1898-1905
- The Commonwealth (Scotland Neck, N.C.) – 1888
- The Review (High Point, N.C.) – 1910-1921
- Rockingham Post-Dispatch (Rockingham, N.C.) – 1917-1922
- French Broad Hustler (Hendersonville, N.C.) – 1905-1919
- The Durham Daily Globe (Durham, N.C.) – 1887-1894
- The Wilmington Messenger (Wilmington, N.C.) – 1897-1908
- Journal of Freedom (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1865
- The Sun (Fayetteville, N.C.) – 1883-1885
- The North-Carolinian (Fayetteville, N.C.) – 1842-1857
- Wilmington Morning Star (Wilmington, N.C.) – 1941-1946
- The Robesonian (Lumberton, N.C.) – 1872-1918
- Western Sentinel (Winston-Salem, N.C.) – 1886
- The State Chronicle (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1883-1892
- The Daily Caucasian (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1895
- The Gold Leaf (Henderson, N.C.) – 1882-1911
- The Caucasian (Clinton, N.C.) – 1884-1913
- The Durham Recorder (Durham, N.C.) – 1879-1911
- The Hillsborough Recorder (Hillsborough, N.C.) – 1836-1879
- Henderson Daily Dispatch (Henderson, N.C.) – 1932-1940
- Hillsboro Recorder (Hillsborough, N.C.) – 1887-1888
- The Carolinian (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1935-1939
- The Lincoln Times (Lincolnton, N.C.) – 1935-1962
- The Southern News (Asheville, N.C.) – 1938-1962
- Charlotte Messenger (Charlotte, N.C.) – 1882-1889
- The Weekly Intelligencer (Fayetteville, N.C.) – 1864-1865
- The Educator (Fayetteville, N.C.) – 1874-1875
- The Chapel Hill Weekly (Chapel Hill, N.C.) – 1930-1934
- Wilmington Journal (Wilmington, N.C.) – 1844-1876
- Cherokee Scout (Murphy, N.C.) – 1890-1917
- The Daily Confederate (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1864-1865
- The Gazette (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1891-1898
- Our Living and Our Dead (New Bern, N.C.) – 1873-1874
- North Carolina Republican (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1880
- Weekly Confederate (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1864-1865
- The Monroe Journal (Monroe, N.C.) – 1903-1922
- The Journal of Industry (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1879-1880
- North Carolina Gazette (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1885
- The Skyland Post (West Jefferson, N.C.) – 1935-1947
- The Coastland Times (Manteo, N.C.) – 1951-1962
- The Burke County News (Morganton, N.C.) – 1899-1900
- The Fool-Killer (Boomer, N.C.) – 1910-1922
- Orange County Observer (Hillsborough, N.C.) – 1880-1916
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.