The Latest Wendell Historical Society Brings New Yearbooks to DigitalNC →
Viewing entries posted in 2020
Remove Filter

Materials from New Bern’s J.T. Barber Alumni Association are now available on DigitalNC

Posted on by

memorabilia photos yearbooks

West Street High School, class of 1954

West Street High School, class of 1954

Thanks to our new partner, the J. T. Barber Alumni Association, DigitalNC is proud to host a variety of materials documenting the history of J. T. Barber High School (formerly West Street High School) and its alumni in New Bern, North Carolina.  The Alumni Association just celebrated the class of 1970’s 50th anniversary this past weekend (via Zoom)!  

The batch includes class portraits, the commencement program from 1954’s graduation ceremony, a photo of the 1954 marching band, and a 1969 student newspaper, all from while the school was still operating. From the alumni association, we have digitized a photo of the class of 1970’s reunion in 2007, several editions of the “Warrior News Bulletin,” the alumni association’s membership roster from 2008, and various annual meeting programs. Additionally, DigitalNC now hosts yearbooks from the school from 1948 to 1971.

J. T. Barber High School, class of 1970

J. T. Barber High School, class of 1970

Click here to see all of our new materials from the J. T. Barber Alumni Association.

Pamlico Community College Documents and Photographs Now Available

Posted on by

campuspublications photos

Thanks to our partner, Pamlico Community College, documents and photographs chronicling the history of Pamlico Community College are now available on our website.  This batch includes meeting minutes for the first organizational meeting of the Pamlico County Technical Institute Unit, a facility dedication and open house program for the college’s new permanent location, 1973-1975 course catalog, and photos from the college’s early years. 

President of Pamlico Technical Institute, now Pamlico Community College, Paul Johnson wields a shovel at the groundbreaking for the college's permanent location.

President of the college wields a shovel at the groundbreaking for the college’s permanent location.

Students and faculty standing on the lawn at the new Pamlico Technical College building representing various areas of study.

Students and faculty on the lawn of the new building.

To learn more about Pamlico Community College, please visit their website.

For more information on other North Carolina community colleges, please visit our community college collections. 

Wake County Public Libraries: A Souvenir Centennial History: 1901-2001 Now Available

Posted on by

Thanks to our partner, Olivia Raney Local History Library, the Wake County Public Libraries: A Souvenir Centennial History: 1901-2001 is now available on our website.  In this book, Roy C. Dicks outlines the one hundred year history of the Olivia Raney Library and establishing of the Wake County Public Libraries. 

Family and their dog looking at books in the library's bookmobile.

To learn more about the Olivia Raney Local Historical Library, visit their site here. 

Columbia High School 1956 and 1957 Yearbooks Now Available

Posted on by

yearbooks

Thanks to our partner, Tyrrell County Public Library, the 1956 and 1957 issues of the Columbia High School yearbook are now available on our website.

The Columbia High School 1956 will and testament page.

Last will and testament page from the 1956 Columbia High School yearbook.

For more information about the Tyrrell County Pubic Library, please visit their website.

For more yearbooks from across North Carolina, visit our yearbook collection.

New Issues of The Chowan Herald Now Online

Posted on by

newspapers

Just over 130 new issues of The Chowan Herald are online and ready to view. The issues span the early 1980s, from 1981 to mid-1983. These additions to our digital newspaper collection are made available thanks to our partners at Shepard-Pruden Memorial Library.

Serving Chowan County, North Carolina from the city of Edenton, The Chowan Herald focused on local news happenings along their side of the Abermarle Sound. Local politics frequently made front page news, especially during the local elections to county board offices.

At other times, The Chowan Herald focused on their community members, as evidenced by DeMint Frazier Walker’s obituary. A prominent community figure and principal of the eponymous high school for thirty one years, Walker’s accomplishments were detailed in the front page article located to the right.

To view all issues of The Chowan Herald, starting with our earliest issue from 1934, click here. To learn more about Shepard-Pruden Memorial Library, you can visit their homepage here.

 

A Visual Dive Into Yearbooks from the 1960s and 1970s

Posted on by

yearbooks

As we continue working from home at DigitalNC, we’re putting our efforts into areas different than our normal day-to-day. Sometimes, you find yourself sucked into things that would be glossed over if not for this change. I found myself absorbed in yearbooks, specifically from the 1960-70s.

While updating metadata on yearbooks, I began to visually notice differences by the decade. There was an obvious break in the standard presentation starting in the 60s. One of the big differences in the 1960s and 70s yearbooks was that they deviated from the conventional by utilizing monochromatic color and blank space to create areas of interest.

Two-page spread from the 1972 Granite Falls High School yearbook, The Granite Boulder. These two pages show candid photos taken during various events. All photos are in tones of pink.

Granite Falls High School, The Granite Boulder, 1972.

Other eras did not benefit from the same camera technology, but these 60s and 70s students utilized the fast-acting updates to great effect. Candid photographs became popular and were integrated into the aesthetics of yearbooks. Often, the layout created a mood through the arrangement of pictures, explaining the story visually.

 

Unlike their predecessors, 60s and 70s yearbooks used less text to review the academic year and instead opted for explanations via visual Rorschach tests. Attitudes of two-page spreads were up for interpretation from the pairing of photo and text.

But the biggest impression I was left with from looking at these yearbooks was how much creativity was squeezed into every page. Students obviously relished the chance to showcase their own versions of life on the many campuses of North Carolina.

As I keep scrolling through the yearbooks, I’m sure I’ll find more to enjoy. If you would like to start your own treasure hunt, you can click here for all 8,000 (and counting) yearbooks, or, if you enjoyed these decades and want more, click here to start with only the yearbooks from the 1960s and 1970s.

Oral histories and other audio-visual materials now online from Methodist University

Posted on by

moving images oral histories

42 audio recordings, including 35 oral histories, and 1 silent video showing Methodist University (then College) in the late 1970s or early 1980s are now online.  Thanks to our colleagues in the Southern Folklife Collection, these audiovisual materials were digitized utilizing funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

three adults sitting at a table

Video still from a silent video taken on Methodist University’s campus in the late 1970s or early 1980s

The oral histories including the batch are with various faculty and other staff who worked in the early days of Methodist University’s history.  There are also 9 other audio recordings that include building dedications as well as fun items such as promotions that ran on the radio for theater productions at the school and a feature called Methodist College Report.  

To learn more about our partner Methodist University, visit their site here.  To learn more about our partnership with the Southern Folklife Collection, read this post.  And to view and hear more audiovisual materials on DigitalNC, visit our North Carolina Sights and Sounds collection.

Oral histories from Mount Airy and Surry County now online

Posted on by

oral histories

21 new oral histories detailing the lives of those who lived in Mount Airy and Surry County are now online thanks to our partners Mount Airy Museum of Regional History and Surry Community College.  The digitization of the oral histories from Mount Airy Museum was done by our colleagues in the Southern Folklife Collection and the work was funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  

screenshot of a piece of yellow paper with the interview transcript

First page of the transcript from the Margaret Leonard, Evelyn Coalson, and Esther Dawson interview. The women are sisters and were interviewed in 1997.

The participants were primarily interviewed in the 1990s about their lives in the Mount Airy and Surry County region dating from around 1910 until 1970s.  The Spanish Flu pandemic, World War I, World War II, race relations, the Civil Rights movement, and the Great Depression are all topics covered in these oral histories, which feature men and women and Black and white people.  

While these oral histories were digitized last fall and winter, with the COVID-19 situation this spring, they provided a very useful option for enhancement while our staff worked from home.  We have been able to add transcripts for each of the oral histories that didn’t have them, as well as enhanced metadata, making them even more accessible than before for our users.

To learn more about our partners on this, visit their websites at Surry Community College and Mount Airy Museum of Regional History.  To learn more about our partnership with the Southern Folklife Collection, visit our post here.  And to view and listen to more oral histories on DigitalNC, visit our North Carolina Oral Histories exhibit.  

DigitalNC on the web: Black Wide-Awake

Posted on by

NCDHC Impact underrepresented

We love being sent or just stumbling upon, projects on the web that utilize materials digitized through the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center.  We thought since they have done such a great job highlighting us, it’d only be fair to turn around and highlight a few we’ve found recently.

Today’s featured website is “Black Wide-Awake” which highlights “documents of historical and genealogical interest to researchers of Wilson County, North Carolina’s African American past.”

The site, written by Lisa Henderson and with posts dating back to 2015, utilizes a wide variety of digitized historical resources to document everything from African-American schools in the Wilson area, wills, correspondence, and newspaper articles related to the enslaved people in Wilson County, to official records including marriage, birth, and death records from the Black community.

Some of the DigitalNC resources that are featured on Black Wide-Awake include many of the photographs and other materials from the Oliver Nestus Freeman Round House Museum’s collection.

Shoe shine kit

Shoe shine kit from the Oliver Nestus Freeman collection, featured in this post on Black Wide Awake.

Wilson City Directories

black and white photograph of two adults picking cotton in a field

Photograph from the 1947-1948 Wilson City Directory, featured in this post on Black Wide Awake.

Yearbooks from Darden High School, made possible by our partner Wilson County Public Library

senior page from a yearbook

Senior page from the 1948 Charles H. Darden High School yearbook, the first yearbook from the school, featured in this post on the website.

Many newspaper article clippings from DigitalNC are also included.  A post discussing the white supremacist views held and pushed by editor of the Wilson Advance, Josephus Daniels, is a recent post that connects directly to the current commentary going on regarding Black Lives Matter and reassessing how we look at our history. 

blog text and newspaper clipping

Post on Black Wide Awake pointing out the racist statements the editor and publisher of the Wilson Advance, Josephus Daniels, made regularly in a call to take down any statue or other dedication marker to him in North Carolina.

The work done on this website is a fascinating look into how resources on DigitalNC can really help illuminate a North Carolina community’s past.  Thanks for using us Ms. Henderson!  We encourage anyone with an interest in genealogy and local history, particularly for the Black community in North Carolina, to visit the site.  

If you have a particular project or know of one that has utilized materials from DigitalNC, we’d love to hear about it!  Contact us via email or in the comments below and we’ll check out.  To see past highlighted projects, visit past posts here. 

R. B. Paschal Diary Transcript Now Available

Posted on by

memorabilia

Thanks to our partner, Chatham County Public Library, a transcript of R.B. Paschal’s diary entries dating from 1860-1861 and 1863-1864 are now available on our website.

In 1854, R.B. Paschal was elected the Chatham County Sheriff and served six consecutive terms.  In addition to his career as sheriff, Paschal served in the House of Delegates in 1865 and North Carolina Senate in 1866. Entries are brief and focus mainly on the weather, daily activities mostly related to farming, and sometimes news of the war.  The diary as a whole gives a window into how the Civil War affected Chatham County directly, with accounts of local men who were arriving back from fighting or taken prisoner of war.  It also includes accounts of Paschal overseeing the trade of enslaved people in Chatham County, a reminder of the duties assigned to the position of sheriff.  Place names and people’s names, white and Black, are included in the diary.   

A page of R.B. Paschal's diary entries from late August to early October.

A page from the R.B. Pashcal diary transcript.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For more information about the Chatham County Public Library, please visit their website. 

More information about the diary and R. B. Paschal can be found here.

DigitalNC Blog Header Image

About

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.

Social Media Policy

Search the Blog

Tags

10 for 10 12daysofncdhc audio behind the scenes campuspublications directories howto maps memorabilia moving images NCDHC East NCDHC Impact news newspapers onsite oral histories photos primary source set scrapbooks teacher resources underrepresented use yearbooks

Archives

Subscribe

Email subscribers can choose to receive a daily, weekly, or monthly email digest of news and features from the blog.

Newsletter Frequency
RSS Feed