This November 15, 1961 front page of The State Port Pilot has a picture of the catch from a local fishing trip and an image of a Kingtown Community Directory sign that lists the names of Kingtown N.C. residents.

Issues of The State Port Pilot newspaper dating from 1950-1962 have been added to DigitalNC.org thanks to funding provided by the Southport Historical Society. These join issues from 1935-1949. 

The State Port Pilot, “a good newspaper in a good community,” documents Brunswick County NC life. Agriculture (especially tobacco) and fishing are frequent front page topics during this time period, and there are “local catch” photos at least every month. Front page news often includes information about local development, such as the construction of the Sunny Point army depot. You will also find coverage of some of the county’s most devastating events of this timer period, including Hurricane Hazel in 1954, and a National Airlines plane crash that killed 34 people in 1960. 

On the front page of issues from through April 1957 you’ll find a regular column entitled “Our Roving Reporter.” This column was written by W. B. Keziah, also known as Bill Keziah, and it was published right up until his death. According to his obituary Keziah was the newspaper’s founder who transitioned to a local reporter known for his commentary and deep love for Brunswich County. Keziah’s columns include everything from the blooming of local camellias, to visits from state and local dignitaries, to gossip, to little-known county and town history. He was a native of Waxhaw and, as a deaf individual, had attended the NC School for the Deaf in Morganton. Numerous comments about his contributions to the county can be found in issues of the Pilot published around the time of his passing.

You can view all of the issues of the State Port Pilot on the newspaper title page. 

Our partner, the Moore County Library, has recently contributed another newspaper title to Digital NC: The Yankee Settler. This issue of the Southern Pines paper from March 23, 1898 has several briefs detailing local happenings as well as world news.

One interesting snippet from the front page is this article advertising a pamphlet on consumption, or as we know it today, tuberculosis (TB). Back in 1898, consumption was one of the leading causes of death, and it had only just been discovered that it was caused by contagious bacteria rather than a genetic predisposition. Still, doctors were mostly at a loss for how to treat the disease; it would be another 30 years before penicillin was discovered and another 15 after that before scientists found an antibiotic that actually killed TB.

James W. Tufts, 1895

Instead, medical minds and entrepreneurs of the early twentieth century tended to treat sufferers with fresh air. One such man was James Walker Tufts, who founded the nearby resort at Pinehurst. Apparently, Tufts was excited by the environment in the North Carolina sandhills, which were described in 1906:

“It is doubtful there is any place in the United States where persons brain-weary and nerve-worn rally or make as rapid progress toward health and vigor. The weather bureau in Washington has observed much warmer than points north and south in winter probably due to the sandy soil, which retains heat and, being a great absorbent of water, prevents evaporation that would otherwise cool the air.”

The resort at Pinehurst officially opened in 1896, making the area a destination for anyone prescribed restfulness and fresh air. Even without the front page news, there’s no doubt that the disease and its treatments were top of mind for residents of Southern Pines, Pinehurst, and the surrounding area. 

You can see all the materials from the Moore County Library on their partner page and their website. You can also sort through our entire collection of North Carolina Newspapers by type, date, and location.

We have another 30 titles up on DigitalNC this week! This batch brings us our first newspapers from Dallas, Fairmont, Lake Landing, Maiden, and Newland, North Carolina!

In the January 8^th, 1891 issue of the Monroe Enquirer-Register we have an ad for a fledging discount store in Monroe, North Carolina called The New York Racket, which will become the shopping mall staple we know as Belk. Founded by William Henry Belk in 1888, the store would change its name to Belk Brothers in 1898 and go on to become one of the largest department store chains in the country.

January 8th, 1891

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 include:

Belhaven

• The Belhaven Citizen (Belhaven, N.C.) – 1914
• The Belhaven Times (Belhaven, N.C.) – 1929
• The Belhaven Times and the Hyde County Record (Belhaven, N.C.) – 1933-1934

Black Mountain

• The Black Mountain News (Black Mountain, N.C.) – 1980

Creedmoor

• Creedmoor News (Creedmoor, N.C.) – 1913

Dallas

• The Dallas Eagle (Dallas, N.C.) – 1891
• The Truth (Dallas, N.C.) – 1903

Fairmont

• The Fairmont Times (Fairmont, N.C.) – 1933
• The Times-Messenger (Fairmont, N.C.) – 1941
• The Fairmont Messenger (Fairmont, N.C.) – 1941

Forest City

• The Carolina News (Forest City, N.C.) – 1952

Gastonia

• The Community Survey (Gastonia, N.C.) – 1921

Iredell County

• The County News (Iredell County, N.C.) – 1953

Lake Landing

• The Mattamuskeet Clarion (Lake Landing, N.C.) – 1925

Lincolnton

• The Lincoln County Times (Lincolnton, N.C.) – 1908

Maiden

• The Maiden Times (Maiden, N.C.) – 1969-1974

Manteo

• The Coastland Times With Which is Combined The Pilot and Herald of Belhaven and Swan Quarter (Manteo, N.C.) – 1963-1974

Monroe

• Monroe Enquirer-Register (Monroe, N.C.) – 1891

Mooresville

• The Mooresville Record (Mooresville, N.C.) – 1897
• The Record-Times (Mooresville, N.C.) – 1899
• The Rounder and the News Leader (Mooresville, N.C.) – 1937
• The News Leader (Mooresville, N.C.) – 1939

Newland

• The Avery Post (Newland, N.C.) – 1955

Rocky Mount

• The Evening Telegram (Rocky Mount, N.C.) – 1916-1954

Shelby

• The Highlander and Shelby News (Shelby, N.C.) – 1921

Statesville

• The New Deal (Statesville, N.C.) – 1933-1934
• Statesville Daily Record (Statesville, N.C.) – 1947-1953
• The Iredell Morning News (Statesville, N.C.) – 1956-1959

Swan Quarter

• Hyde County Record (Swan Quarter, N.C.) – 1928-1930

Taylorsville

• The Taylorsville News (Taylorsville, N.C.) – 1895

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.

Three textile workers pictured in the August 10, 1923 issue of The Charlotte Herald.

Six newspaper titles from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have recently come out of copyright, meaning that they are now available digitally in our Newspapers of North Carolina collection. Geographically spanning the whole state, these titles come from as far east as Fairfield, west as Hayesville, north as Leaksville and Madison, and south as Maxton. 

In the United States, copyright expires for some types of published materials a certain time period after their publication. In 2022, many materials published in the U. S. before 1927 are now out of copyright. Each year that boundary year moves forward by 1; in 2023 the boundary will be “published before 1928.” This is one of the reasons many sites like ours share a lot more materials published before that moving target. In addition, we have a workflow where certain types of publications from 1927-1963 undergo copyright review where we determine if they are likely to be out of copyright and low risk to publish online.

Because of the forward movement of the copyright boundary year and some other reasons related to fair use, we’ve been able to add the newspapers listed below to DigitalNC. These titles were also selected to help bolster representation of certain geographic areas on our site. In content, these issues feature many highlights, including descriptions of prohibition-era beer busts in Hayesville and a comical column of national news from Maxton.

The full list of titles includes:

• The Scottish Chief (Maxton, N.C.) – 1925-1956
• The Clay County News (Hayesville, N.C.) – 1926-1938
• The Messenger (Madison, N.C.) – 1924-1933
• Hyde County Messenger (Fairfield, N.C.) – 1926-1930
• Tri-City Daily Gazette (Leaksville, N.C.) – 1883-1924
• The Charlotte Herald (Charlotte, N.C.) – 1923-1925

You can browse all of our digital newspapers by location, type, and date in our North Carolina Newspapers collection. To learn more about UNC Chapel Hill’s collections, you can visit their partner page or their libraries’ website.