Thanks to our partners at Central Piedmont Community College, we now have five new scrapbooks from the school, spanning 1957-1992. This wide-ranging collection covers the practical nursing program, Phi Theta Kappa, the Student National Education Association, and the “Seminars on Asian Understanding” organized by Willimore “Cy” Hastings in 1971-1972. These scrapbooks include a diverse assortment of formats that give insight into the activities of CPCC students and faculty, and their interactions with the greater Charlotte community — and the world — over the course of nearly forty years.
The Seminars on Asian Understanding is a particularly interesting look at CPCC’s engagement with global politics and its efforts to foster cross-cultural communication. The series hosted American foreign policy experts and ambassadors from Vietnam, China, Thailand, New Zealand, Singapore, Indonesia, Korea, and Malaysia. Newspaper clippings and correspondence reveal Hasting’s work to organize the talks and public interest in the program, which drew attendees from the CPCC community and beyond.
See the rest of our Central Piedmont Community College materials here and our North Carolina Community College digital exhibit here.
Typically, yearbooks cover a single academic year but UNC Pembroke published a single yearbook with material from 2021-2022. This yearbook comes in the wake of COVID-19 and gives insight into what the lives were like for members of the UNC Pembroke community. Take some time and flip through the pages, there are some real gems in this yearbook.
Thanks to our newest partner, McDowell Arts Council Association (MACA), a batch containing booklets of poetry by Howard R. McCurry and Alice Koonts Ostrom; script for Voices in the Wind by Billy Edd Wheeler, MACA scrapbooks spanning 1972 through 1987, and more are now available to view on DigitalNC!
Founded by community members in 1972, MACA provides accessible art experiences to all residents while also promoting and preserving cultural life in McDowell County. The Association is a member of the North Carolina Arts Council (an agency of the NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources), which supplies people of the state a network of resources, grants, and county partners. Today, MACA offers events and programs such as classes for various forms of art; plays and musical performances; community band concerts; local artist markets, and more. The materials in this batch, however, give us a glimpse into their 50+ year history of support, art, and work in McDowell County.
Beginning with their inaugural year to 1987, the two MACA scrapbooks offer the most insight into the Association’s history. They feature founding documentation, photographs from different shows, newspaper clippings, correspondence, and—of course—art in various forms! One of these works of art is Will Barnet’s lithograph, Woman and Cats (seen above). The work served as the cover art for an invitation to the NC National Bank’s Graphics and Watercolors traveling exhibition which included several works by North Carolina artists.
Literary art is also heavily featured throughout this batch in the booklets, scrapbooks, and magazine issues. Complimentary to Barnet’s Woman and Cats lithograph, Edward Smith and Archie McPeter’s poem “Cat,” can be found in MACA Musings: McDowell County Poetry Spring Festival [1974]. The booklet is a collection of poems that were selected by the Written Arts Department of the McDowell Arts and Crafts Association (now MACA) as the best efforts of submitted poetry to a contest that was held in May 1974.
Keeping with the cat theme, we felt it important to mention that MACA’s head of security and official greeter is a cat that goes by the name Biscuit (pictured left).
Twenty new diaries belonging to Mrs. Mary Kelly Watson Smith (c. 1831-1924) are now available in conjunction with Greensboro History Museum. Mrs. Smith was married to Reverend Jacob Henry Smith (1820-1897), the pastor of Greensboro’s First Presbyterian Church for over forty years. The couple were married in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1857 before moving to Greensboro two years later. Mrs. Smith eventually had nine children, seven of whom lived into adulthood. The Smith family were active secessionists and supported the Confederacy during the Civil War. Her diaries reflect the experience and perspective of a matriarch at the time, recording Mrs. Smith’s involvement in church services, rotary clubs, and memorials for both O. Henry and Confederate soldiers.
These diaries record the last decade of Mary Smith’s life, from 1911 to her falling ill in 1923. They detail the sinking of the Titanic, Greensboro’s “building boom,” and the entirety of the first world war. Mary Smith includes various newspaper clippings (both national and local) alongside clippings from sermon books and hymnals.
Mary Smith’s diaries provide an essential insight into Greensboro’s political, social, and religious spheres during a period of great upheaval. Anyone interested in Greensboro, the First Presbyterian Church, or the beginning of the 20th century is sure to find these diaries interesting. You can read the new diaries on our website here. When you’re done with that, read more about Mary Kelly Watson Smith on the Greensboro History Museum’s website and view other materials from the museum here.
Thanks to our partners at Campbell University, you can now explore Buie’s Creek High School yearbooks on DigitalNC’s website. This batch has materials from 1948- 1977, that’s almost thirty years worth of memories. These high school yearbooks are a great way to see what school was like for students in Harnett County. Yearbooks are popular because of they contain so many photographs, and have a level of organization and labeling that is helpful in identifying folks. Not to mention, flipping through an old yearbook is nostalgic.
Journey through time by looking at our latest batch of materials from Mitchell Community College. Thanks to our partners, Mitchell Community College, you can now view 10 news scrapbooks. The scrapbooks are composed of newspaper clippings containing announcements about the lives and achievements of students as well as events taking place in the community at large during the 1950’s-1970’s. Visit DigtalNC to take a look at the Mitchell Community College newspaper clipping scrapbooks.
This particular batch of yearbooks includes handwritten commentary in the margins and on the pages. The note scribbled in the margins shows the beloved annual yearbook signing tradition. Flipping through the pages and finding a picture that take you back to the good times spent with peers, and making sure all your friends and teachers left a remark to remember them.
The blank pages in the back of the yearbook is known to be dedicated for signatures. This is a crucial element of the yearbook signing tradition. Signees always sure to give their best signatures. Do you recognize any of these signatures?
To learn more about The Henderson County Education History Initiative, please visit their website linked here.
Here we have new papers from the North Carolina Collection that have never been microfilmed! The North Carolina Collection originated in 1844 and is the largest traditional collection of library materials for any state. Learn more about the NCC here!
We’ve just added newspaper issues from 37 titles, dating from 1819-1968, with the majority dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. From a variety of cities, most of these additions are only 1-5 issues per title. Thanks to the State Archives of North Carolina and its preservation of newspapers, we’re pleased to include these fill-in issues. The State Archives provided them to us as part of their newspaper microfilming workflow.
Below is a list of titles, their cities of publication, and the years from which the issues date.
The State Archives has an exhibit of Early North Carolina Newspapers here. Their microfilming efforts are behind almost all of the digitized microfilmed papers available through DigitalNC. Search or browse all of our newspapers on the newspaper landing page.
Agenda of Sandhills Board of Trustees meeting December 8, 2009
Digital NC has uploaded a new batch of minutes from the Board of Trustees of Sandhills Community College in Pinehurst, North Carolina. Researchers can use these records see the changes in administrative policy over time. This latest addition covers 2002-2015, significantly updating our existing collection of Sandhills minutes. See previously digitized records, spanning 1963-1996, here.
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.
