This week we have 48 titles up on DigitalNC! One of the newspapers added this week is The Holden Record. The short-lived Raleigh publication, solely dedicated to discrediting gubernatorial candidate W.W. Holden, was created by abolitionist and Raleigh Register co-publisher H.H. Helper. Holden went on to be elected governor, even though the paper painted him as a violent man and blamed him for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Holden took an anti-Klan stance and this tension led to the Kirk-Holden War. He served until 1871, was impeached, and charged on eight counts for alleged crimes committed during this time. While the impeachment was politically motivated due to his suppression of the Klan, he is still the only North Carolina governor to have been impeached.

Over the next year, we’ll be adding millions of newspaper images to DigitalNC. These images were originally digitized a number of years ago in a partnership with Newspapers.com. That project focused on scanning microfilmed papers published before 1923 held by the North Carolina Collection in Wilson Special Collections Library. While you can currently search all of those pre-1923 issues on 

Newspapers.com, over the next year we will also make them available in our newspaper database as well. This will allow you to search that content alongside the 2 million pages already on our site – all completely open access and free to use.

This week’s additions are the following:

• North Carolina Times (New Bern, N.C.) – 1864-1865
• The Weekly Sentinel (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1867-1871
• The North Carolina Minerva and Fayetteville Advertiser (Fayetteville, N.C.) – 1796-1799
• The North-Carolina Minerva and Raleigh Advertiser (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1799-1800
• The North-Carolina Minerva (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1800-1803
• Minerva; or Anti-Jacobin (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1803-1804
• The Minerva (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1804-1809
• Raleigh Register and North Carolina Gazette (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1823-1848
• The Raleigh Register (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1848-1868
• The Weekly Republican (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1867
• The Holden Record (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1868
• North-Carolina Constitutionalist and States Rights’ Advocate (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1831
• The Era (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1874-1876
• The Carolina Era (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1872
• Tri-Weekly Era (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1872
• The Weekly Era (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1872-1874
• The Farmer and Mechanic (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1901-1908
• The Raleigh News (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1876
• The Raleigh Times (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1912
• The Weekly Raleigh Register and North Carolina Gazette (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1841-1852
• The Weekly Raleigh Register (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1852-1868
• The Raleigh Register (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1868-1886
• The Semi-Weekly Raleigh Register (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1852-1863
• Raleigh Register and North-Carolina State Gazette (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1823-1825
• The Daily North-Carolina Standard (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1865
• The People’s Press and Wilmington Advertiser (Wilmington, N.C.) – 1833-1834
• Raleigh Times (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1848-1852
• Raleigh Republican (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1867-1874
• We Know (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1872
• Daily Advertiser (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1868
• The Semi-Weekly Record (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1865
• The Daily Record (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1865
• City and State (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1878
• The National (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1878
• The Evening Crescent (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1874
• Daily Evening Crescent (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1874
• The Whig Clarion (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1843-1844
• The Weekly News (Charlotte, N.C.) – 1869-1870
• The Hornets’ Nest (Charlotte, N.C.) – 1849-1850
• The Southern Mechanic (Charlotte, N.C.) – 1876                                          
• The Ballot (Charlotte, N.C.) – 1886
• Purefoy’s Express (Charlotte, N.C.) – 1877
• The Journal-Observer (Charlotte, N.C.) – 1883
• The Daily Carolina Observer (Charlotte, N.C.) – 1869
• The Daily Observer (Charlotte, N.C.) – 1869
• Christian Advocate (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1863-1870
• Newbern Weekly Times (New Bern, N.C.) – 1866
• North Carolina Guardian (Charlotte, N.C.) – 1867

If you want to see all of the newspapers we have available on DigitalNC, you can find them here. Thanks to UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries for permission to and support for adding all of this content as well as the content to come. We also thank the North Caroliniana Society for providing funding to support staff working on this project.

Thanks to our newest partner, Person County Museum of History, four new issues of The Roxboro Courier are now available on our website. This batch expands our current holdings of the newspaper to cover from 1919 to 1946. Many of the articles in this batch relate to the aftermath of World War I and President Woodrow Wilson’s negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference.

One of the issues features an article on the creation of “grenade banks.” Hand grenades manufactured in the United States for World War I were being taken and repurposed (after the careful removal of the explosives) into miniature saving banks. The saving banks were then lent to children by community banks as a way to fundraise through War Saving Stamps. After saving for a certain period of time, the children would bring their money-filled grenades to the bank to be counted. If the child had enough money to buy a War Savings Stamp, the grenade would belong to the child. If there was not enough money for the War Savings Stamp, the money had to be invested into Thrift Stamps and the child would have to try to save enough money to keep the grenade bank during the next cycle. To view a picture of a grenade bank or to read the entire article, please click here.

June 11, 1919.

The Person County Museum of History is located in Roxboro, North Carolina in the home of former North Carolina governor W. W. Kitchin. The museum has several interesting exhibits related to Person County history which discuss topics such as Sappony heritage and baseball legend Enos Slaughter. The site also features seven other historic buildings which can also be toured. Currently, the museum is temporarily closed for exhibit renovations and inventory but plans to be opened again soon.

To learn more about the Person County Museum of History, please visit their website.

To view more issues of The Roxboro Courier, please click here.

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