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Mid-1800s Chatham County Superior Court Minute Docket Now Online

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behind the scenes memorabilia

DigitalNC is proud to host the entire contents of a Chatham County Superior Court Minute Docket that spans from October 10, 1839 to December 3, 1866. This minute docket was provided by our partners at Chatham County Historical Association.

This minute docket is a primary source of legal cases from Chatham County, N.C. in the mid-1800s, including names of those who were called to court and what the disputes covered. Notably, this record was saved from the Chatham County Courthouse fire that occurred on March 25, 2010.

Also, you may be wondering what the object at the left corner of the docket image is; it’s a bone folder! We use bone folders to assist with digitization. In this case, you’ll find it gently holds back the pages that wouldn’t stay flat. You’ll also find weighted strings doing the same work on several other pages.

To look at the entire Chatham County Superior Court Minute Docket, click here. To learn more about the Chatham County Historical Association, you can view their homepage here.

New Newspaper, Chapel Hill News Leader, Online Now

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newspapers

Thanks to our partners at the Chapel Hill Historical Society, DigitalNC is now home to 167 issues of the Chapel Hill News Leader. This batch includes issues from May 20, 1954 to December 29, 1955.

Covering stories in and around Chapel Hill and Carrboro, NC, the Chapel Hill News Leader frequently spoke on events at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation in public schools and in 1955 federal courts ordered the admission of Black undergraduates to UNC. The Chapel Hill News Leader, leading with a now famous photo, noted the admission of Leroy Frasier, John Lewis Brandon, and Ralph Frasier, the first Black undergraduate students at UNC, on their first day of school, September 15, 1955.

To view all issues of the Chapel Hill News Leader, click here. To learn more about the Chapel Hill Historical Society, please visit their website here.

Livingstone College and Boyden High School Yearbooks Now Available

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underrepresented yearbooks

Thanks to our partner, Rowan Public Library, Boyden High School and Livingstone College yearbooks are now available on our website. This batch includes yearbooks from 1941 for Boyden High School and 1930, 1946-1947 for Livingstone College.

Livingstone College is a historically Black college located in Salisbury, North Carolina. In 1879, the college was founded by the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Zion Church and was just a single building on 40 acres of land. In 1887,  the school was renamed from Zion Wesley College to Livingstone College in honor of David Livingstone—a philanthropist, explorer, and Christian missionary. Today, the college consists of more than 15 buildings on over 300 acres of land with over a thousand enrolled students. 

Pictures of students and the Livingstone College campus.Several pictures featuring various groupings of Livingstone College students.

In 1904, Salisbury High School was founded in to educate children of the area. Twenty-two years after its founding, in 1926, the school’s name changed to Boyden High School after a new school building was built. The school remained Boyden for almost 50 years until the name was reverted back to Salisbury High School in 1971. 
Page in the 1941 Salisbury High School yearbook detailing the various statistics of the class of 1941 including average height, eye color, etc.

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

To view our North Carolina African American high school yearbooks, visit our African American high schools collection.

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

1830s School Workbook, 1940 Medical Diary, and Other Person County Materials Now Available

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yearbooks

Thanks to our partner, Person County Public Library, two batches containing 1963 and 1964 Bethel Hill High School yearbooks, a 1940 medical diary, a Person County Public Library ledger, and a handmade school workbook from the 1830s is now available on our website.Pictures of two school groups (bus drivers and dramatic class). The first picture features people working on fixing a bus. The second has a group of students gathered in a classroom talking to one another.

Most interesting in this batch is the handmade school workbook from the 1830s. The workbook belonged to Thomas H. Briggs (born December 24, 1814). It contains sections on various math skills including compound multiplication, compound division, the single rule of three, inverse proportions, geometry (see how neat the geometry shapes are below!) and more. In addition to instructing the student on how to do complete problems, each section includes several problem examples.

A page dedicated to geometry problems.

Geometrical Problems

To learn more about Person County Public Library, please visit their website.

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

Materials Documenting the Life of Crystal Lee Sutton, Activist and Union Organizer, Now Online

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memorabilia

A wallet-sized card printed in blue and red text. The title states "Boycott J.P. Stevens products". The rest of the card features a list of products to boycott.

Boycott J.P. Stevens Products Card, created by the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, 1980.

A large batch of materials from Crystal Lee Sutton’s personal collection have been digitized and are now available to view online. These materials were donated to Alamance Community College by Sutton herself in 2007. A big thank you to our partners at Alamance Community College for sharing these historic items with us.

Crystal Lee Sutton was a union organizer and activist, recognized as the driving force behind the unionization of J.P. Stevens plant workers in Roanoke Rapids, N.C. Her story inspired the acclaimed 1979 film, Norma Rae. Items digitized in this collection give firsthand accounts leading up to that notable unionization, including a union cheer and a timeline of events recorded in several meeting recollections with J.P. Stevens management. Employed by J.P. Stevens, Sutton was fired and then rehired for her union efforts (see a handwritten discharge order here), eventually moving from job to job. Through her life, Sutton continued to promote unionizing through features in television shows, as in the documentary Woman Alive!, and speaking engagements.

Many items in this collection also speak to the film inspired by Sutton’s life, the Academy Award winning “Norma Rae”.  Records of legal action Sutton took against the film company are present, as well as a letter to Sally Field, the actress who portrayed Norma Rae.

Other notable items in this batch include: sections of a 1977 Mountain Life & Work issue on the history and union efforts of Southern textile workers; a thought-provoking program that accompanied the film Testimony: Justice vs. J.P. Stevens; several materials from Walter M. Williams High School in Burlington, N.C.; and a dictionary of teenage slang from the 1950s.

For a complete look at the materials from The Crystal Lee Sutton Collection, click here. For more information on the collection, please contact Alamance Community College by visiting their homepage, found here.

More Davidson College Yearbooks Just Added to DigitalNC

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yearbooks

Six Davidson College yearbooks are now available to view online thanks to our partners at Davidson College. These yearbooks are recent, spanning the years 2010 to 2015.

Davidson College is a private liberal arts college located in Davidson, N.C. While the student population is small, about a quarter of the students participate in NCAA Division I sports teams. Prominently represented throughout these yearbooks are the many student athletes and sports events.

For a look at all of the many (over 100!) Davidson College yearbooks DigitalNC hosts, click here. To learn more about Davidson College, click here.

Late 19th, early 20th Century Bladen County Newspapers Added to DigitalNC

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newspapers

Masthead and first few paragraphs of of the October 6, 1910 issue of The Bladen JournalToday’s post announces the addition of 9 issues of Bladen County newspapers. Much of our newspaper digitization relies on newspapers microfilmed by the State Archives of North Carolina, which has a long history of preserving the state’s papers in film format. To date, only 9 Bladen County issues have been filmed, and we’re pleased to add them to the site on behalf of the Bladen County Public Library.

Bladen County is located in the southeastern part of the state. It’s county seat is Elizabethtown. The newspaper additions are as follows:

Elizabethtown

Clarkton

The newspapers are all a varied mix of national and local news along with ads, with the Cape Fear Lance appearing to have the most local content. 

Digitization of these issues was funded in part by the North Caroliniana Society. Visit the homepage of the Bladen County Public Library to learn more. You can also search all of our newspapers on our North Carolina Newspapers landing page or visit our Bladen County page to see other items related to that part of the state.

Black and white paragraph from the May 26, 1899 issue of the Cape Fear Lance stating they will offer newspaper subscriptions for trade

This paragraph from the May 26, 1899 issue of The Cape Fear Lance states that you could get a newspaper subscription in trade for “anything it can handle.”

Early yearbooks from Fayetteville Technical Community College now on DigitalNC

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yearbooks

Yearbooks covering 1963 to 1969 from Fayetteville Technical Community College are now online.  Fayetteville Tech started in 1961 as the Fayetteville Area Industrial Education Center (IEC) to provide adult education and industrial training to those in Cumberland County and the surrounding area, with a particular draw for former military members, which have a large presence in that area of the state due to Fort Bragg.  In 1963 the institution joined the North Carolina Community College system and became the Fayetteville Industrial Institute, which is remained until becoming Fayetteville Tech in 1988.  

3 black and white photographs of students in a shop, students in a classroom, and students putting up an air duct

Photographs from the Air Conditioning Technology program in the 1963 yearbook

To view more materials from Fayetteville Technical Community College, visit their partner page.  To view more materials from North Carolina community colleges, visit our NC Community College collection here. 

Yearbooks and alumni materials from Clear Run High School on DigitalNC

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memorabilia underrepresented yearbooks

3 yearbooks and materials from several alumni reunions, including the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the final graduating class in 2019, are now online from our partner Clear Run High School Alumni Association.  Clear Run High School served the Black community in Garland, North Carolina and the surrounding area in Sampson County until 1969, when it closed due to integration.  The alumni association remains quite active to this day, with annual reunions celebrating everyone who attended the school.  

Graduation portrait in black and white, with type of congratulations to the Class of 1969 celebrating their 50th anniversary

Page from the 1969 50th reunion program

Four students standing on stairs in business clothing

Class of 1969 senior class officers

To view more materials from Clear Run High School Association, visit their partner page.  To view more high school yearbooks from across North Carolina, visit our North Carolina High School yearbooks collection.  

Jones County Newspaper from 1949-1971 added to DigitalNC

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newspapers

Top half of the October 23, 1958 issue of The Jones Journal with headshots of four adultsThanks to a nomination from the Neuse Regional Library, we’ve added 1,098 issues of the Jones County Journal, a newspaper published out of Trenton, N.C. This is one of only two newspaper titles we have for Jones County. Issues date from volume one, number one, published in 1949 through April 1971. Because the Journal was digitized from microfilm shot with high contrast, many of the photographs are not very clear but the text is quite sharp.

The tagline for the paper when it began through 1954 was “A Better County Through Improved Farm Practices” and much of the news in the earlier years revolves around agricultural methods and needs. There are also editorials,  personal news columns, and coverage of local events from election results to church picnics and barbecues. There’s quite a bit of coverage of the more populous Lenior County, perhaps in part due to the fact that the paper was published by The Lenoir County News Company. 

The Journal is focused on local news, from the front page on. For a number of years Maysville and Trenton have their own sections. Reporters describe national and international events through their impact on Jones County residents. For example, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the front page headline reads “Trenton Area Shares Nation’s Shock on President’s Murder.” Coverage of the Vietnam War is shared in the same way, like the Jones County veteran given half of the newspaper’s front page to describe his experience. Papers full of this kind of unique local reporting, with little to no syndicated content (content that a publisher paid for and was reused in newspapers throughout the world), are especially vital for research.

Digitization of the Jones Journal was possible thanks to generous funding from the North Caroliniana Society. You can find more materials we’ve scanned on behalf of the Neuse Regional Library on their contributor page. You can search thousands of issues of North Carolina newsppaers from all over the state using our  Newspapers landing page.

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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.

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