Thanks to our newest partner, William B. Umstead State Park (WBU), a batch containing over 150 new records are now available on DigitalNC. This batch holds a wealth of William B. Umstead State Park’s history featuring everything from plats, detailed construction plans of the park during the Great Depression when the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was active, blueprints of a swimming pool, plans for the segregated park areas, plant information, planting schedules, and much more. One of many fascinating finds in this batch was the mention of the Camp Polk Prison Farm (also referred to as Cary Farm) on an ownership map of what would become the Crabtree Creek Recreational Area (now WBU) and the CCC era building plans.
In 1920, the Central Prison bought the former World War I tank training facility site and converted it into the Camp Polk Prison Farm. Totaling around 2,700 acres, the farm was equipped with livestock, modern farm equipment and machinery, cotton gin, dairy, saw mill, along with a modern fireproof brick and steel dormitory built using prison labor.
According to the November 1928 issue of Prison News, Camp Polk Prison Farm was set aside as a juvenile farm for white male prisoners under 21 to separate them from the older, seasoned criminals. However, not all prisoners under 21 were automatically qualified to be placed at Camp Polk farm. Mr. Pou, superintendent of the state’s prison at the time, notes only individuals who showed adaptability and “a readiness to deserve the favors tendered.” While at the farm the prisoners were required to work doing farm cropping, clearing new lands, canning, running the diary, and other tasks. Prisoners were also given the opportunity to receive instruction at night from individuals who were noted as educated and/or “capable honor grade” prisoners.
By 1927 the farm was a very profitable investment for the Central Prison. The September 1927 issue of Prison News, reported that the prison camp was “producing a great portion of its meats and food stuffs as well as supplying the Central Prison and the camps in part with fresh vegetables […]” and was “reputed to be worth by capable authorities easily over a half million dollars more than its cost to the State seven years ago, and has proved one of the best investments the State every made.”
Working collaboratively, state and federal agencies purchased 5,000 acres of land which included the Camp Polk Prison Camp under the federal Farm Resettlement Administration to develop a recreation area in 1934. The Crabtree Creek Recreational Area (now WBU) project provided jobs to individuals through the CCC and Works Progress Administration. Three years after the purchase of land, in 1937, the park opened with four camps along with day-use and picnic facilities. Plans and maps of the area and buildings during this period are present in this batch, including the latrine plans for the east, west, and middle units in Camp 2-G seen above.
In 1943, North Carolina bought the recreational area from the federal government for $1 and it was renamed to Crabtree Creek State Park. Although the park was not officially segregated up to this point, it was established that there were two separate entrance for white and Black individuals. In April 1950, however, the State of North Carolina officially segregated the park after converting 1,234 acres in the southern section into a Black park which was named Reedy Creek State Park. The white park retained the Crabtree Creek State Park name until 1955 when it was changed to William B. Umstead State Park. In the early 1960s, the parks were desegregated and eventually recombined in 1966 to form under the name William B. Umstead State Park. However, the impression of racial segregation can still be seen today with the park’s two separate entrances.
Thanks to our partners at the Hendersonville High School Alumni Association, DigitalNC is proud to announce that a collection of student life records are now available online for the first time! High school archetypes of all kinds are represented within this collection, which has something for Buellers and Ringwalds alike. Three new scrapbooks and seventy-six issues of the student newspaper are now available online!
Two of the scrapbooks featured in this collection were created to record the epic highs and lows of the drama club from 1969 to 1978. The scrapbooks feature all aspects of the drama club’s operations, from color photographs of rehearsals to annotated play festival programs. Each year encapsulates a journey, from auditions in August to the performance in the North Carolina Theater Conference festival. A personal highlight of these books are the handmade felted harlequins and jesters, which often point out key moments or important documents.
A different high school experience is represented in the third scrapbook, composed by a member of the Hendersonville High School Student Council in 1990. The scrapbook records the high school’s event planners, meeting organizers, and sock-hop decorators at the advent of the decade. A corresponding hope and vigor runs through the scrapbook, and the slogan “Bearcats are Putting It Together in the 90’s!” can be seen throughout the pages. The scrapbook contains an excellent series of photographs of the school’s clubs, which have some truly spectacular 90s fashion.
You can find these new scrapbooks online now at NC Digital here, and the new issues of the student newspaper online here. Interested in more content from Hendersonville High School? You can find their associated page at DigitalNC here, or visit the Hendersonville High School Alumni Association online at their website here.
The Olivia Raney Local History Library in Raleigh has contributed three new tax books from 1891, 1895, and 1898 that are now available on DigitalNC! The Olivia Raney Library specializes in materials that facilitate local history and genealogy research, and holds an extensive collection of Wake County tax records. These books are valuable resources for anyone seeking to research specific individuals or property ownership statistics in Raleigh at the turn of the century. We are excited that they are now available digitally for researchers to peruse from anywhere.
Our digital collections include nearly 200 records from Olivia Raney, including yearbooks, scrapbooks, newspapers, and catalogs. Browse all of our Olivia Raney Local History Library materials on their partner page here, and visit their website here.
Digital NC is excited to announce new materials relating to Sarah “Sadie” Delany now live on our website, thanks to our partner St. Augustine’s University in Raleigh, North Carolina. Included in this upload are a full textbook and recipe book, staff and student directories, newspaper clippings, handwritten recipes, and other ephemera collected by Delany.
Sadie Delany and her sister, Dr. Annie Elizabeth “Bessie” Delany, are known for being pioneering figures in the Black community. As children of an enslaved man, Sadie became the first black woman to teach home economics in white New York schools while Bessie was the second black woman with a dentistry license in New York. The sisters grew up on the St. Augustine campus in Raleigh, which their father attended. The sisters later moved to New York, after living through the Jim Crow era in the South.
With a master’s degree from Columbia and many years of experience teaching in black schools, Sadie sent an application to a white high school to teach home economics. However, she knew that if the Board of Education preemptively met her, she would never get the job because of the color of her skin. Instead, she feigned a mix-up and only met the staff on her first day arriving to teach. She went on to instruct at multiple high schools, including the Girls’ High School in Brooklyn and the Washington Irving High School in Manhattan. Below is a Washington Irving class list taught by Delany and a Girls’ High School faculty list that pictures Sadie Delany’s name.
In tandem with her academic accomplishments, Sadie was also an accomplished cook. This upload contains many of her handwritten recipes and newspaper clippings that she likely used. Pictured below is her recipe for 60-minute rolls.
Sadie lived to be 109, passing away in 1999. To learn more about these impressive women, check out Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years, a memoir published by Sadie and Bessie in 1993. Click here and here for further reading. To explore other North Carolina collections on our site, click here.
To browse more materials related to North Carolina, take a look at the other collections on Digital NC. To view more North Carolina yearbooks, visit our Yearbooks Collections on Digital NC. When new materials contributed by Blowing Rock Historical Society becomes available you can find them on their contributors page. In the meantime, you can check out what Blowing Rock Historical Society has been up to on their website.
Thanks to our partners at Campbell University, DigitalNC is proud to announce that four new yearbooks are now available! These issues of Pine Burr are some of the most recent publications from Campbell’s past, spanning from 2016 to 2023. They will join a collection of over one hundred Campbell yearbooks currently hosted on DigitalNC, some of which reach back into the first decade of the twentieth century.
The new yearbooks reflect student and faculty life immediately before and after the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrating the ways in which university systems adapted both instruction and education to protect the health of its student body. They could prove to be a vital resource for future researchers, which makes their preservation all the more important. Further, the recency of the publications are a useful comparison to Campbell’s older materials, reflecting over a century of growth and change within Harnett County.
You can read new issues of The Pine Burr online at DigitalNC here. Interested in learning more about Campbell University history? Find more resources online at DigitalNC here, or visit Campbell University’s digital archives online here.
A trove of catalogs, magazines, newspapers, and bulletins from North Carolina Wesleyan University has just been uploaded to DigitalNC! NC Wesleyan is a private Methodist university located in Rocky Mount, N.C. that has been operating since 1956. These documents start in 1960 and document the university’s progression and growth over the last six decades and into the present. Researchers can see an abundance of information on NC Wesleyan alumni, faculty and staff, course offerings, sports and events, and more.
See all digitized issues of the NC Wesleyan student newspaper The Decree here. Visitors to the site can also view all of our materials from NC Wesleyan at their contributor page here, and visit their website to learn more.
Thanks to our partners at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, DigitalNC is proud to announce that two new scrapbooks are now available online! The scrapbooks commemorate two major administrators of Rowan-Cabarrus Community College: Director C. Merrill Hamilton and Chairperson Harold Kenerly. They are the first of their kind to be added to NC Digital’s repository of Rowan-Cabarrus Community College records, and highlight the college’s vivid history from a brand new light.
C. Merrill Hamilton was the first president and director of the community college from 1962 to 1977, during a period when the school was still known as the Rowan Technical Institute. He presided over a period of growth for the institution, and his scrapbook records newspaper articles announcing scores of new programs hosted by the school. Aerial photography records the sometimes controversial land-acquisitions bought under Hamilton’s tenure, upon which many new buildings were constructed to host the school’s growth.
Chairperson Harold Kenerly’s scrapbook records just a single night of celebration for the administrator and Marine, but holds a wealth of fascinating information on the commemorative banquet. The scrapbook celebrates Kenerly bringing an “esprit-de-corps” to campus, and is decorated in Marine regalia. Highlights of this scrapbook include color photographs of the feast held at Salisbury Country Club, a full six-course menu, written invocations of the grace, and rules written for “proper Marine mess etiquette.”
You can find both scrapbooks online at DigitalNC here. If you’d like to learn more about Rowan-Cabarrus Community College’s history, you can find their partner page at DigitalNC here, or their website here.
Founded in 1964 Southwestern Community College is located in Sylva, NC. The materials in this batch includes over 40 year of commencement ceremony programs dating back to 1965 up until 2008. There are a variety of ceremonies including Fall, Spring, Summer and specialized ones for majors like Nursing. The programs list out the names of graduates and the degree they received. It is to be noted that the schools name changed throughout the decades and that can be seen in the graduation commencement programs. You can also find annual reviews of the college, newsletters and newspaper clippings.
Our partners at the Graham Historical Museum have contributed a new bound volume of 1924 maps of Burlington and the surrounding areas. These were created by the Sanborn Insurance Company, which produced massive numbers of maps to assess buildings for fire risk from 1867 to 1970. They depict building features in great detail, sometimes even by room. Sanborn often surveyed the same places multiple times, making their maps an incredibly helpful resource for tracking changes over time in cities and specific buildings.
This latest batch depicts Burlington, North Carolina and surrounding areas of Altamahaw, Glen Raven, Bellemont, Hopedale, Elon College, Ossipee, Glencoe, and Saxapahaw. The volume contains an index of streets and significant buildings, general information on population and economic activity, and specific information pertaining to fire insurance assessment. If you are a music lover, the Saxapahaw map may be of particular interest. Like most towns in Alamance County, Saxapahaw’s economy was based on textile production and most residents worked at the cotton mill. The cotton mill closed in 1994 and was eventually converted into apartments overlooking the Haw River. The adjacent former dye house is now the Haw River Ballroom, a state of the art music venue that hosts touring acts from around the country and the world.
A deindustrialization success story, Saxapahaw has undergone transformational changes since this map was published 100 years ago. Researchers can see how it and other Alamance County communities have evolved since 1924 by viewing the map here. More digitized Sanborn maps are available on DigitalNC, as well as through UNC Libraries. See all of our collections from the Graham Historical Museum at their contributor page and learn more by visiting their website.
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.
