Thanks to our partner, Greensboro History Museum, new issues of Greensboro High School’s (now Grimsley High School) student newspaper High Life are now available on our website. This batch fills in previous holes from 1921 all the way to 1974. A majority of the articles in the newspaper discuss school related news such as band concerts, athletics, student council elections, fundraisers, student achievements, opinions on life at GHS, and more.

All-State Band Members from Grimsley High School, 1974.

To view more newspapers, please visit our North Carolina Newspaper Collection.

Much of our newspaper digitization is done from microfilm reels, which typically only have one title on a reel.  However, sometimes a paper does not take up a whole reel and to maximize efficiency, when the reel was created, other small runs of papers are included.  Often those small runs are simply a few issues of very old papers where the only extant know copies number 2 or 3 issues.  This was the case with a reel we digitized this past year for the Bladen Journal.  In addition to the Journal, 13 other titles were on the same reel and all have now been added to DigitalNC!  

The full list includes:

Enfield Times 2 issues, 1873
Tar River Beacon 2 issues, 1876
Greenville Express 2 issues, 1880-1881
Cape Fear Lance  1 issue, 1899
The Beacon  2 issues, 1888
The Enfield Progress 1 issue, 1887
Old Constitution  2 issues, 1870
 Franklinton Weekly 3 issues, 1883, 1886, 1893
The Rural Visitor  7 issues, 1898-1899
 Graham Tribune 1 issue, 1900
The Greenville Index  1 issue, 1894
The Western Reporter  1 issue, 1881

The towns the papers represent cover the eastern and western portions of the state, with the oldest issue from 1873 and the most recent from 1900 – over a quarter century of coverage from across the state.

To see more newspapers, check out our North Carolina Newspapers section of the website.  

Front page of the August 19, 1938 issue of the Roanoke Beacon and Washington County News discussing the dedication of the Albemarle Sound Bridge.

Additional issues of The Roanoke Beacon and Washington County News, published out of Plymouth, NC, are now online thanks to funding from the North Caroliniana Society. This newspaper was recommended for digitization by the Washington County Library which is part of Pettigrew Regional Library. With these additions, you can now search the newspaper from 1899 to 1956.

The News published articles about agriculture (particularly cotton and seafood), social events, politics, and the local schools. Town Topics and Society columns are a great source for the personal news of Washington County residents. There is also coverage of national and international news, which increases through World War II. During that time you’ll see articles that describe the town’s preparations in case of invasion, that recount the activities of local soldiers, and that call for frugality and the purchase of war bonds. 

Later issues in this run cover the aftermath of World War II, distribution of the polio vaccine to Washington County residents, and the debate around segregated schools. 

You can view all of the issues of The Roanoke Beacon and Washington County News available on our site through the newspaper’s landing page.

The Tryon Daily Bulletin’s tagline is the World’s Smallest Daily Newspaper. This masthead is from Aug 15, 1945, with Seth M. Vining as editor.

Issues of the Tryon Daily Bulletin from 1935-1936 and 1942-1951 have been added to DigitalNC, thanks to funding from the North Caroliniana Society. This title was recommended and advocated for by the Polk County Public Library.

The Bulletin is a physically smaller paper both in dimensions and page length, and it actually boasts the tagline “The World’s Smallest Daily Newspaper” to this day. Despite (or perhaps because of) its size, the Bulletin focus mostly on local news. You’ll find items about church, school, and sporting events, and articles about marriages, illnesses, births and deaths without many syndicated articles or ads to sift through. As a daily, the paper covered smaller details than you might normally see, as specific as a list of books added to the library. 

The Curb Reporter column graphic beginning in the mid 1940s.

The issues scanned from 1942-1951 cover World War II and its immediate aftermath. Unlike many of the Bulletin’s peers, the front page doesn’t focus on national news but rather the war’s impact on the local community. There are calls for donations of items for soldiers, articles announcing events for soldiers visiting from Camp Croft (which was located near Spartanburg, SC), and lists of Tryon-area soldiers and their comings and goings. The paper features a regular front page column called “Curb Reporter” which is a compiled list of brief local, national, and international news items.

You can view all of the issues we’ve scanned of the Tryon Daily Bulletin on the newspaper’s landing page. All of the items we’ve scanned on behalf of the Polk County Public Library can be found from the Library’s contributor page.