Thanks to support from the North Caroliniana Society and to our partner, Margaret & James Harper, Jr. Library, all 1950 issues of The State Port Pilot are now available on our website. With this batch, our current collection of The State Port Pilot totals 819 issues and spans 1935 to 1950.

The State Port Pilot, August 9, 1950.

Published in Southport, North Carolina, the paper focuses on local and North Carolina news topics such as tobacco farming, the growing Southport community, everyday life in Southport, and local politics. Interesting articles and images from the 1950 issues include the winner of the Carolinas Yam Festival’s Yam Queen title, barning tobacco (picture from the article above), and the early budding of azaleas in Southport.

To learn more about the Margaret & James Harper, Jr. Library, please visit their website.

To view all issues of The State Port Pilot, please click here.

To view read more newspapers from around North Carolina, please click here.

Front page of The Farmville Enterprise from 1948.

Digital NC is happy to announce that another four years of The Farmville Enterprise are now available. Provided by our partner, Farmville Public Library, the new issues include the years 1948 – 1952. Established in 1910, The Farmville Enterprise is a local town newspaper located in Pitt County, NC, that published weekly for the community members of Farmville, North Carolina.

The “About Farmville People” section of the Farmville Enterprise started in 1951.

The new issues to DigitalNC discuss a wide range of local topics that included segments such as news from the state capital, Raleigh, as well as a short section called “About Farmville People” that discussed the lives of the local community.  The collection joins previous additions from 1914 – 1947.

To learn more about the Farmville Public Library, please visit their website.

You can also browse our entire North Carolina newspaper collection here. 

Tuba player Greg Davis.

Thanks to our partner, Iredell County Public Library, and support from the North Caroliniana Society the complete collection of the Iredell Citizen spanning from 1998 to 2008 is now available on our website. This is only one of two newspapers that we have for Iredell County.

The Iredell Citizen was first published on April 15, 1998 as a weekly newspaper for the community. The paper was focused solely on publishing articles about the individuals and happenings of the county’s community rather than national or international news stories. Popular articles topics in the Iredell Citizen include retirement, events in the community, city council updates, and obituaries. The last issue of the paper was published on June 26, 2008 after a 10 year, two month, and 11 day run.

To learn more about the Iredell County Public Library, please visit their website. To view more materials from Iredell County, please click here. To view more newspapers on DigitalNC, visit our North Carolina Newspapers collection.

The Daily Record, May 28, 1959.

Senate Passes Minimum Wage Act, May 7, 1959.

Thanks to support from the North Caroliniana Society and to our partner, Harnett County Public Library, new issues of The Daily Record are now available on our website. This batch expands our current collection of the paper to include 1956 to 1962. Published Monday through Friday, The Daily Record suppled Dunn and Harnett County with local and global news stories. Today, the paper continues to be published in Dunn, North Carolina.

Major headlines in this batch include Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to America, Russia’s announcement to send apes to the moon, the aftermath of America sending monkeys to space, and the establishment of a minimum wage in North Carolina.

Starting in 1945, citizens of North Carolina fought for the establishment of a minimum wage in the state. The article to the right, “14-Year Fight Ends; Action First In South,” highlights the establishment of a minimum wage by North Carolina’s General Assembly in 1959–the first state south of Pennsylvania to do so. The bill guaranteed that all workers in the state would be paid a minimum of 75 cents an hour, equivalent to about $6.88 an hour today. 

To learn more about Harnett County Public Library, please click here.

To view all issues of The Daily Record, please click here.

To view more newspapers from North Carolina, please click here.

The Transylvania Times, May 3, 1956.

Thanks to our partner, Transylvania County Library, new issues of The Transylvania Times are now available on our website. This batch includes issues from the years 1941 to 1975, adding over 1,000 issues. Published weekly, the paper focuses on education updates (such as at Brevard College and high school), music camps and performances, local and national news, and community events. Featured articles and topics from this batch include the end of World War II and the fight against polio.

Present in many issues of The Transylvania Times are advertisements and articles highlighting polio—information on the disease, how to keep your household safe and sanitized, and March of Dimes fundraisers. In 1955, the poliomyelitis (polio) vaccine was made available in the United States. In the same year, the March of Dimes organization had one of its largest fundraising efforts with the hopes of raising enough money to vaccinate nine million 1st and 2nd graders throughout the United States. In the Brevard branch of the organization, citizens were encouraged to donate what they could and to donate again. The more that the community donated to the organization, the more doses of the vaccine could be created and distributed across the country. Unfortunately the Cutter Incident (where some batches of the vaccine contained live polio virus) significantly decreased the distribution and the American people’s faith in the vaccine. Eventually that faith was restored with a revamped system of regulating vaccines and development of more polio vaccines such as the Sabin oral vaccine. Twenty-four years after the release of the first vaccine, in 1979, the United States was declared polio-free.

The Transylvania Times, January 9, 1964.

To learn more about the Transylvania County Library, please visit their website.

To view all issues of The Transylvania Times, please click here.

To view more newspapers from around North Carolina, please click here.