Viewing entries posted in June 2018

Scrapbooks from New Partner, Raleigh Fire Museum, Now Available

Auxiliary Officers from a Raleigh Times clipping in 1953-1954 scrapbook

Image from the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Raleigh Fire Fighters Association Scrapbook [1951-1953]

10 scrapbooks created by the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Raleigh Professional Fire Fighters Association Local 548 are now available on DigitalNC. These scrapbooks cover the years 1951-1972 and were provided by our new partner, the Raleigh Fire Museum. The Raleigh Fire Museum houses a collection of artifacts and images representing over 150 years of firefighting in Raleigh, North Carolina.

This group of scrapbooks contains images, correspondence, programs, news clippings, and more documenting both firefighting and social events organized by the Ladies’ Auxiliary. These scrapbooks are organized chronologically and according to type of materials contained within. From the scrapbooks, you get a sense of the social culture surrounding firefighting from the perspective of the spouses and families of firefighters.

To learn more about our partner, the Raleigh Fire Museum, visit their DigitalNC partner page or take a look at their website!


New Photographs, Documents, Scrapbooks, and More from Kings Mountain Historical Museum

A photograph of the World War II Memorial Honor Roll in Kings Mountain, NC. Established by LIONS International.

Over a dozen new documents, photographs, scrapbooks, and artifacts have been digitized and added to DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner, the Kings Mountain Historical Museum.

One scrapbook celebrates the centennial celebration of Kings Mountain in 1974. Including photos of people dressed in vintage costumes, newspaper clippings, event flyers, and other items, this scrapbook serves as a permanent commemoration. There is also a series of scrapbooks about the family of Jacob S. Mauney, one of the pioneers of Kings Mountain. These scrapbooks were compiled between the 1950s and 1990s, with the family bringing together their history through newspaper clippings, papers, photographs, and other ephemera.

A postcard from France in 1919. The photo is of the 1st Division Band playing at the Argonne Cemetery.

One box we received contains photographs from 1917-1943 of all kinds. One collection has a series of photographic postcards from the Argonne Cemetery in France in 1919, while there are other individual photographs, including a photo of the World War II Memorial Honor Roll in Kings Mountain. There are photographs of Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, a photo of the Central Graded School in Kings Mountain, and more.

We also received a number of books and booklets, the majority from the first half of the 20th century. One booklet is a soldier’s account of traveling in battle during World War I throughout France and Germany, while another is his record ledger of soldiers, his meals, and more recorded from 1923-1925. Another booklet is a history of the Battle of Kings Mountain fought in 1780, and there is a booklet celebrating the 50th anniversary of the First National Bank of Kings Mountain.

The entire list of items can be found below:

To see more materials from the Kings Mountain Historical Museum, you can visit their partner page, or click on their website to learn more.


Even more additions to the R. Kelly Bryant Obituary Collection Now Online

New additions to the R. Kelly Bryant Obituary Collection, provided by our partner, Durham County Library, are now online at DigitalNC. This collection of funeral programs and obituaries of African American residents of Durham was compiled by R. Kelly Bryant (1917-2015), a historian with an extensive knowledge of Durham, North Carolina.

The collection is arranged alphabetically by the last names of individuals. Names included in the newest addition cover the surnames Mabry through Quiett. The funeral programs and obituaries are an excellent genealogical source and often include biographical details like birth and death dates, names of family members, locations lived, and aspects of an individual’s life story. We will continue to digitize this collection, so please check back for more entries in the coming months.

To take a look at what we have digitized so far of the R. Kelly Bryant Obituary Collection, please visit the collection’s exhibit page. Information about the collection is also available in the finding aid on Durham County Library’s website.

To see more materials from Durham County Library, visit their DigitalNC partner page, or take a look at their website.


New Yearbooks and More from Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Now Online

Several new high school yearbooks from Mecklenburg County are now online on DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner institution, the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library. Included are copies of various yearbooks around the county, all from 1967. The yearbooks contain individual school portraits, group portraits, and photographs of sports, activities, and their school groups.

To view the yearbooks, visit the links below:

Also new to our collection is a program from the 2017 Theresea C. Elder Trailblazer Awards Brunch, held in Charlotte. Created by Mrs. Elder in 2005, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Black Heritage Committee was formed to “research, collect and disseminate” historical information about the African-American community in the Charlotte Mecklenburg community. The 2017 brunch honored the Charlotte Post Publishing Company, the minority owned and operated news organization in North Carolina and South Carolina. The 2017 keynote speaker at the event was Mary C. Curtis, a columnist, journalist, national politics correspondent and speaker.

To see more from the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library, click on their partner page or visit their website to learn more.


Brookford NC Celebrated in Newly Digitized Book

The author at age 10 on page 22 of Brookford Memories

Brookford Memories, a book contributed by Hickory Public Library, celebrates life in Brookford, NC, a small town in Catawba County. Brookford Memories was written in 2003 by Brookford native Dyke Little, born in 1935. This book contains the chapters “Childhood Memories”, “Brookford Places”, “Brookford Mills”, “Brookford People”, “Brookford Lives”, “Brookford Photos”, “Rosa Clinard’s Album”, “Grandview School”, “Mill Property”, “Church Brochures”, “Myrtle Hunt Scrapbook”, and “More Brookford Photos.”

Through a series of vignettes, interviews, biographies, and historical documents, Little paints a portrait of Brookford as it was during it’s heyday as a mill town. In the introduction, he reflects his childhood during the late 1930s and 1940s saying, “the Depression was over but World War II was starting. This was a time when we all felt closer to each other… Back then the pace of life was slower and people had more time for each other.”

Although Little’s focus is on Brookford, delving into family histories and specific childhood memories, the book touches on themes common to towns all around North Carolina and beyond.

To see more materials from Hickory Public Library, take a look at their DigitalNC partner page, or view their website.


Pamphlets, Booklets, Reports, and More from Gaston County Public Library Now Online

 

Photo from the advertising pamphlet “Gastonia, Your Convention City”

Back in February, some of the NCDHC staff travelled down to our partner Gaston County Public Library and set up to do two days of on site scanning.  The materials we scanned during that visit, as well as materials we brought back with us to scan in Chapel Hill, are now online.  

While on site, we scanned a chattel mortgage book from 1915, documents relating to a distillery in the area in the 1890s, and several local history books put together by students in the local schools in the 1950s and 1960s.  

Dozens of new reports, documents, and programs from Gaston County are also now available after we scanned those back in Chapel Hill.  Over 50 items in total, these documents, pamphlets, and booklets paint a greater picture of what it meant to live in Gaston County in the beginning and middle of the 20th century.

The 1976-1977 annual report from the Gastonia Housing Authority. The report includes stats on the types of houses and apartments under their management.

Many of these items are informational booklets, some published by the Gastonia Chamber of Commerce, telling readers about the population, GDP, schools, and industries throughout Gastonia. Others are specific booklets or programs from certain events. One program is from the 1974 dedication and recognition of Zoe Kincaid Brockman, a former editor of the Gastonia Gazette. There are other programs, including church programs from First Baptist and First Presbyterian in Gastonia. A few of the other booklets included in this collection also detail the towns outside Gastonia, like Mount Holly, Cherryville, Ranlo, and Lowell. These collections can be viewed here, and here.

Also included in this collection is a dozen booklets about the Gastonia Debutante Club, from 1976 to 1987. These booklets celebrate the Debutante Club and honor the individuals who helped put it on. Certain editions also include a list of members, the by-laws of the Debutante Club, a list of past Presidents, the history of the organization, and the debutantes of various years.

To see more materials and learn more about the Gaston County Public Library, you can visit their partner page or take a look at their website.


The Latest Batch Q-Notes, LGBT Newspaper from Charlotte, Shows the Paper’s Origins

The newest batch of Q-notes, Charlotte’s LGBT newspaper, adds very early issues of Q-notes to DigitalNC. These issues from 1983 and 1984 were published as a monthly newsletter by Queen City Quordinators (QCQ), a non-profit group established in 1981 by gay activist Don King and lesbian activist Billie Stickell. According the the Q-Notes website,

“The newsletter ended its run in 1984, with the close of the non-profit. In 1986, the newsletter was revived, and the publication was reborn as a monthly, print newspaper. The first issue of the revived community news source was published in June 1986, to coincide with National LGBT Pride Month.”

The early Q-Notes QCQ newsletters shed light on issues facing the LGBT community in Charlotte in the early 1980s and show the some of the grassroots resources and organizations pushing for information, safety, and acceptance. Conferences, meetings, and support groups were highlighted as ways of finding and building communities. Another important resource was the Gay/Lesbian Switchboard, a volunteer-run hotline providing information to Charlotte’s LGBT community.

This batch also includes newer issues of Q-notes from the 2000s, completing our run of Q-notes provided by our partner, University of North Carolina at Charlotte. To see more materials from University of North Carolina at Charlotte visit their DigitalNC partner page or take a look at their website.


See Central Carolina Community College from Above in New Photos

1997 aerial view of Central Carolina Community College’s Lee County Campus, showing construction on the Vocational Technology building (later renamed Joyner Hall)

The path between the Learning Resource Center and Wilkinson Hall on the Lee county main campus of Central Carolina Technical Institute in the snow.

A new batch of photographs from Central Carolina Community College is now available on DigitalNC. These photographs range in date from the 1960s through the 1990s and focus mainly on campus facilities. CCCC was started as Lee County Industrial Education Center in the early 1960s, but underwent name changes in 1965, 1979, and 1988 to become Central Carolina Technical Institute, then Central Carolina Technical College, and finally Central Carolina Community College. These photographs follow the school through periods of growth and change and document how campus looked through all of these stages. Particularly striking is a collection of aerial photographs that shows CCCC’s Lee County Campus from above.

This new batch of photographs joins previously digitized photos from CCCC that focus on student life and academic programs. To see more materials from our partner Central Carolina Community College, visit their DigitalNC partner page or take a look at their website.


Newsletters from Richmond Community College Now Available on DigitalNC

Two new scanned documents from Richmond Community College are now available on DigitalNC. These newly digitized documents are a 1984 newsletter to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the college, and the 1985 Spring Quarter Schedule for the school, at the time named Richmond Technical College.

The 1984 booklet celebrated the 20th anniversary of Richmond Technical College. In April 1984, a four-day-long Open House was held at the RTC campus, with entertainment, displays from local businesses and industries, demonstrations of RTC’s computer systems, and North Carolina Governor Robert Scott speaking as president of the NC Community College System. It also acted as an informational booklet, including which classes would be offered the following year, which degrees and curricula were offered at the school at the time, and new equipment the campus had received.

The 1985 Spring schedule also contained news and information on campus activities, tuition, and dates and times for classes. One of the programs they advertised was their computer-aided graphic design curriculum, where students could “print a picture of Einstein”, then “command the computer to reverse the image.” (see right) At the time, it cost a resident of North Carolina $51 for a full-time student’s tuition.

To learn more information about Richmond Community College, visit their partner page, or take a look at their website.


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