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The color slides beautifully capture Temple’s shows! This is from a production of A Christmas Carol
Thanks to our partner Temple Theatre in Sanford, a new set of photographs, slides, and scrapbooks are now available online. Highlights from this collection include a series of black-and-white photographs from the theater’s renovation in the 1980s, over seventy slides from Temple Theatre’s grand reopening, and a scrapbook recording the theater’s early days as a movie venue. These fantastic records will join a pre-existing collection digitized early last year, which also includes scrapbooks, slides, and more!
Many pages have a variety of theater programs, stories, and ads!
The new scrapbook is an amazing record for anyone interested in film history. Within this book’s pages are meticulously collected newspaper clippings, licensing deals, and advertisements for movies released in the golden age of Hollywood cinema. Everything from classic noir to old-school westerns were featured at Temple Theater, and there were even rotating seasons of live performances. Reports on fiddling contests often share pages with advertisements for the newest Charlie Chaplin routine, and movies are often advertised with corresponding news reels or comedy routines. There’s even an extensive collection recording when Leo, the Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer lion, visited Sanford! Apparently he stayed in the town for a few days, and performed on-stage live as part of the studio’s partnership with the local movie theater.
You can find the new scrapbook, as well as the brand new photographs, online now at DigitalNC here. Interested in learning more about the historic Temple Theatre? You can find their partner page online at DigitalNC here, or visit the theater’s webpage here.
Thanks to our partners at Person County Museum of History, we are excited to announce a wealth of new materials are now available on DigitalNC. Included in this collection are numerous high school commencement programs and reunion booklets from High Plains School, Person County Training School, Person County High School, and Roxboro High School. Additionally, meeting minutes from the Person County Board of Education, economic development reports, and local business publications are also now available. Photographs from the early 20th century document special historical events like military memorial ceremonies for President Harding, and provide a glimpse of what everyday life looked like at the time, which included having oil delivered by a horse-drawn wagon.
Historical gems also include two Official Postmasters’ Account & Record Books from 1900 to 1903 and 1903 to 1906 that document local and US Postal Service history. The ledgers were kept by postmaster Nathaniel T. Williams, who ran the Push Post Office that served the unincorporated Push community located in Person County’s Flat River Township. The fourth-class post office was only operational from March 16, 1900, to August 15, 1908, after which the Push community sent and received their mail through the Roxboro Post Office, which had been servicing Person County residents since 1892.
In addition to the Post Office ledgers, one of the more unexpected histories found in this diverse collection of new materials are told by two additional ledgers that originate over a hundred miles away from Person County. The 1887 to 1889 and 1889 to 1890 record books kept by Reuben M. Hearne, an agent for the Old Dominion Steamship Company, illuminate a long past era in North Carolina history when steamboats and river travel were in their golden age. Each ledger contains meticulous logs chronicling the daily passengers and trips of the R. L. Myers, a river steamboat that traveled between the cities of Greenville (Pitt County, N.C.) and Washington (Beaufort County, N.C.). The R. L. Myers was just one of the many river steamers that would traverse the Tar River throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries as they transported goods or passengers between the coastal and inland regions of the state. The Tar River begins on the eastern edge of Person County, adding the age of river travel and steamboats as yet another rich history of Person County.
Alongside the historic ledgers, photographs, and publications found in this new batch of material from the Person County Museum of History, dozens of new issues of local and student newspapers are also now available on DigitalNC. Included issues are from the following newspapers:
More information about our partner, the Person County Museum of History, can be found here.
More materials, including yearbooks, photographs, maps, and additional newspaper issues can be found on the Person County Museum of History’s contributor page linked here.
This group of student newspapers begins by shedding its previous title, The Carolina Journal, and reintroducing itself as The 49er Times. The new name is symbolic; the editors created a space to foster inclusivity, discourse, and news for UNC Charlotte students and faculty. While every rendition of the paper has featured an opinions section, the new 49er Times returned the “Left/Right” column from earlier editions. This piece features arguments between two editorial board members from opposing liberal and conservative political views.
The first edition of “Left/Right” in the new 49er Times, June 30, 1982
These insightful and occasionally comical columns highlight the realities of college students and the pressing political issues of the early 1980s. The debates in “Left/Right” range from the rights of labor unions to prayer in public schools and the potential reelection of President Ronald Reagan in the 1984 election. These students’ succinct and powerful arguments reflect the polarizing times they lived in, with the Cold War and conservatism still present in everyday life.
“The 49er Times” embraces the free press, publishing op-eds regarding the campus bookstore policies and the fear of a nuclear war. The newspaper became a venue for critical thinking, debate, and prose for students and faculty as they grappled with changes across campus and around the world.
Visitors can view more issues of The 49er Timeshere.
Visitors to the site can view all of our newspaper issues from UNC Charlotte here.
To browse our entire collection of student newspapers, select the “Student Papers” filter on our “Newspaper Titles” search page linked here.
Interested in learning more about the War of 1812? Thanks to our new partners at the North Carolina Society Daughters of 1812, now you can! For the first time ever, six scrapbooks chronicling historic preservation, research, and reenactment are now available. Each scrapbook records written histories, historic banquets, and a variety of materials gathered by daughters of War of 1812 veterans in or around North Carolina. The scrapbooks date from as far back as 1940, to as recently as 2012, covering almost a century of historic engagement.
Each scrapbook contains a variety of records related to the operation of a historic preservation society. These range from letters written by Senators, to awards granted to members for their service in historic programming and outreach. A personal highlight are the colorful photographs of the Daughters’ reenactment events, where each member would dress in period-appropriate attire (often including their husbands, children, or even grandchildren!). Each members’ dress is evidence of their breathless devotion to historical accuracy, as well as their skill in sewing and tailoring!
The written histories in each scrapbook are also an amazing way to find out more about North Carolina’s involvement in one of the lesser recognized aspects of American history. North Carolina witnessed several historic battles during the course of the war, and its coast bore witness to a rogues’ gallery of privateers, pirates, and buccaneers. Many histories are concerned with one Johnston Blakely, captain of the Wasp. During the War of 1812, Captain Blakely captured many British boats and disrupted countless others. He was a graduate of the University of Chapel Hill in its early days, and remained in North Carolina after his service. Another prominent name mentioned in the scrapbooks is Theodosia Burr, the daughter of Aaron Burr. Theodosia went missing off the coast of the Carolinas around the War of 1812, and several oral histories in the scrapbooks speculate on her fate.
You can read these histories and discover North Carolina’s involvement in the War of 1812 online now here. Thanks again to our amazing partners at the North Carolina Chapter of the Daughters of the War of 1812 for making this collaboration possible. You can find their partner page on DigitalNC here, or visit their website online here.
With the help of our partners at Alamance County Public Libraries, we are pleased to announce the addition of several scrapbooks on DigitalNC. These scrapbooks include newspaper clippings dating back to the late 1960s and 1970s, and were compiled by Alamance County Recreation and Parks Department (also known as Alamance Parks). The clippings collected related to community services, events, and news related to the parks and public spaces managed by Alamance Parks.
DigitalNC visitors can browse the newly available Alamance County Recreation and Parks Department Scrapbooks by clicking the blue, hyperlinked titles below.
Current information about Alamance County Recreation and Parks Department can be found on their Alamance Parks website here.
More information about our partner, Alamance County Public Libraries, can be found here.
More materials, including yearbooks, photographs, maps, and four newspaper titles can be found on the Alamance County Public Libraries’ contributor page linked here.
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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.
