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We have just added issues of the Tryon Daily Bulletin from 1951-1953, 1980-1982, 1990-1992. These join the issues already on our site from 1928-1951. Contributed by the Polk County Public Libraries, the issues from the 50s were added from microfilm. In addition, the Libraries’ staff scanned print issues from the 80s and 90s to add to our site. “The World’s Smallest DAILY Newspaper” is a true example of a local paper, with contents created locally and confined mostly to county or regional news.
Published 5 days per week, the Bulletin from these different time periods have things in common! On the left side of every front page is the column “Curb Reporter.” Starting with the day’s weather, it has brief snippets of local to international news.
In all decades, you’ll find classified ads, committee and government meeting reports, and personal notes and mentions that have all but dropped off of newspapers today.
In 1883, the Citizen covers the establishment of Asheville’s Free Library. Free libraries were an increasingly popular idea in a time where use of many libraries required a paid membership. For the Asheville Free Library, memberships were encouraged to support the purchase of books, the rent, and the librarian’s salary, but were not required for use of the library. The articles mention the purchase or donation of Scientific American, Harper’s, and other long-standing periodicals. Calls for support like the one in the image below mention the sentiment that even if contributors never set foot in the library, the presence of one improved their community as a whole. This sentiment is still shared by many today.
North Carolina Citizen, March 18, 1882, page 1.
Another fun find is a picture of the proposed Central Methodist Church (now Central United Methodist Church) found on the front page of the August 2, 1901 issue of the Citizen. R.H. Hunt, the architect, had recently presented plans to the congregation. The article describes the proposed church in detail, including the various rooms and the materials to be used. If you’ve been to Asheville, this church is a striking part of downtown near Pack Square.
Semi-Weekly Citizen, August 2, 1901, page 1.
On July 25, 1889, The Weekly Citizen published an illustrated edition which focused entirely on highlighting the beauty of western North Carolina along with Asheville’s development. The sketches, some of which are below, feature Hickory Nut Gap, Mount Mitchell, a viaduct near Round Knob, Asheville Female College, and Arden Park.
You can view additional newspapers from Asheville by using the filters on our newspapers home page. For all of the materials on DigitalNC for Buncombe County, try the county page.
Thanks to our partners at the Winston Salem African American Archive, DigitalNC is proud to announce that nearly five hundred new records are now available online! This collection contains an astonishing variety of records from Winston-Salem’s African American history, and include records from businesses, churches, sports teams, and more. The records date from as far back as 1848 to as recent as 2020, covering nearly two centuries of history. While many of these records are from Winston-Salem proper, there are an astounding variety from towns such as Kernersville, Clemmons, and Lewisville.
The church records predominantly hail from Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches. There are mid-century Sunday Service Bulletins, newspaper features on prominent pastors, and many photos of churchgoers, choir-members, and church events. A personal highlight of this collection is the inclusion of The Spotlight, a monthly newsletter published by New Bethel Baptist Church. Each issue of The Spotlight featured updates on the lives of its congregation, schedules for church events, and photos of previous events. This batch includes seven issues of The Spotlight, ranging from 1956 to 1974 and chronicling over a decade of New Bethel’s flock.
Also included in this collection are an excellent series of records highlighting Black owned businesses from 20th century Forsyth County. Two issues of the N.C. Minority Business Directory provide resource guides for the years 1995 and 1992, and a set of photographs picture business owners relaxing, smiling, or working in their shops. Businesses featured in this collection include the Twin City Bus Line, WTOB Radio Broadcasting, and Wilson’s Grocery Store.
Perhaps the most colorful feature of this batch, however, is the amazing arrangement of sports records from Winston-Salem’s history. This collection has an amazing variety of material, from color photographs to football programs to sticky notes. The author’s personal favorite (perhaps of this entire batch!) are the two football programs from Atkins High School. Each of these programs feature amazing cover illustrations, photographs, and team rosters. The programs are filled to the brim with care and attention, with margins in each program featuring notes on referee signals, illustrated in an iconic mid-century copy.
If you’re interested in digging in to this treasure trove of Forsyth County history, you can find all of the new records online at DigitalNC here.
For over 50 years, Forsyth Technical Community College has been providing higher education across 12 locations in Forsyth and Stokes counties. DigitalNC is excited to add our first Forsyth Tech materials with a large batch that includes newspapers, catalogs, handbooks, magazines, yearbooks, and scrapbooks. These documents provide a comprehensive look into Forsyth Tech’s history and how it became a community staple. With documents dating back to the 1960s, visitors to the site can read articles by longtime president Dr. Bob H. Greene, follow legislative debates concerning education funding, or revisit President Obama’s visit to the campus in 2010.
Peruse the Forsyth Technical Community College Student Newspaper here, and see all of the Forsyth Tech materials at their contributor page here. To view more materials from community colleges across North Carolina, please view our North Carolina Community College Collections exhibit here.
A new batch of student newspapers from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte is now available on DigitalNC, thanks to our partners at UNC Charlotte! This recent addition includes 44 issues from August 1978 through April 1979, a testament to the paper’s prolific output. Readers can peruse the volumes to gain insight into the issues with which students were most concerned. While many of the stories featured in the paper are local to campus and the surrounding Charlotte area, articles also cover state-wide and national news.
Jerry Winston from the Nov 28, 1978 issue of The Carolina Journal
Visitors to the site can view all of our newspaper issues from UNC Charlotte here. To view other student newspapers, navigate to “Browse Newspaper Titles” and select the “Student Papers” filter. See all of our materials from UNC Charlotte, including yearbooks, catalogs, photographs, and more newspaper titles at their contributor page here.
North Carolina’s thespians will be pleased to know that, thanks to our new partner Temple Theater, DigitalNC is now hosting four massive theater scrapbooks online! These scrapbooks cover the rich history of Sanford’s Temple Theater, a historic venue that was founded in 1925 as a vaudeville theater and soon became a center for all arts and culture in Lee County. The scale of these scrapbooks are monumental, and they hold every possible detail a dramaturge could hope for: from play programs to color photographs of productions, from newspaper clippings to blueprints.
One scrapbook contains original records from the theater’s early days in the 1930s, and includes original video rental invoices from studios such as Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer, Universal, and Fox. The rest of the scrapbooks cover the theater’s revitalization efforts, which began in 1981, as well as the early days of the theater’s status as a National Historic Site. Interested readers can see the variety of acts and events that took place during this period: including street carnivals and Dungeons & Dragons tournaments to raise money for theater. Almost every page is suffused with color and includes color photographs of the stage, complete play programs, or even posters advertising the theater’s productions. You’d be hard pressed to find a more comprehensive record of a historic theater’s operation, or more convincing evidence of the love and effort that goes into play production.
You can find these four new scrapbooks online at DigitalNC here. Interested in learning more about Temple Theater? Visit their partner page online at DigitalNC here, or find them online at their website here.
2024 marks 10 years of fruitful partnership between Central Piedmont Community College (CPCC) and the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center (NCDHC)! With over 40,000 students enrolled annually, 6 campuses, and nearly 300 programs offered, CPCC is a significant educational institution in North Carolina with a long history and extensive archives. We’re pleased to continue our collaboration with this latest addition from CPCC, a large batch of student literary magazines spanning 46 years. The CPCC literary magazine has been known as The Paul Atwell Memorial Literary Magazine, Keystone, and in its most recent iteration, The Hammer. These magazines showcase the talents of decades of students, and gives researchers insight into the literary and artistic subjects that most preoccupied them.
See over 500 digitized records from Central Piedmont Community College at their contributor page here. Check out our North Carolina Community College Collections exhibit here.
Thanks to our partner at the Shepard-Pruden Memorial Library, DigitalNC is proud to announce that over a hundred brand new issues of The Chowan Herald have been digitized by our team in Elizabeth City. Many of these issues are from recent history, spanning from 2017 to 2019, with one special issue coming from 2003. They will join over four thousand issues of The Chowan Herald already online at DigitalNC, reaching back to the paper’s very first issue in 1934.
Front page of the Chowan Herald after Isabel hit the town September 24, 2003
The Chowan Herald serves the city of Edenton and Chowan County in eastern North Carolina, on the banks of the Albemarle Sound. The paper serves a vital role in the function of Chowan County life; recording local events, letters from community members, and changes in county infrastructure and business. Highlights from this batch include the “Pets of the Week” section (included in each issue), the weathering of Hurricane Isabel in 2003, and the celebration of “Ye Olde Halloween on the Green” in 2019.
In addition to these physical papers scanned in house by the DigitalNC satellite staff, we also added issues of the Chowan Herald from microfilm covering 2015 to 2017, thanks to funding by the folks at Shepard-Pruden.
You can find every issue of The Chowan Herald online at DigitalNC here. Interested in learning more about Chowan County History? Look at “Chowan County” online at DigitalNC here, or find the Shephard-Prudent Memorial Library partner page online at DigitalNC here.
In honor of our 14th birthday this week (May 12th is officially when digitalnc.org went live!) we thought we’d do a fun post to explore one of the real quirks of working with materials from so many different places around North Carolina – the phenomenon of towns and counties with the same name being separated by miles and miles geographically. We tried to brainstorm as many as we could but we welcome any additional suggestions!
A map of cessions from Orange County over time – all the counties pictured broke off from Orange to form their own government over a hundred year period.Chapel Hill Historical Society
Towns at One end, Counties at the Other
Albemarle, NC is in Stanly County, not Albemarle County (which used to exist but no longer does!)
Beaufort, NC is in Carteret County, not Beaufort County
Cherokee, NC is in Swain and Jackson Counties, not Cherokee County
Cherokee, NC spanning the Swain County and Jackson County lines. Map is of the Cherokee Reservation and is from 1962.Western Carolina University
Columbus is in Polk County, not Columbus County
Davidson, NC is in Mecklenburg County, not Davidson County
Hendersonville is in Henderson County, but Henderson, NC is in Vance County
And a fun bonus one – not a county or town – but! Wake Forest University is of course in Winston-Salem, NC not Wake Forest, after moving there in the 1960s.
We’d also like to thank the following town/county pairs that are conveniently in the same place:
Camden, NC is in Camden County
Currituck, NC is in Currituck County
Durham, NC is in Durham County
Map of Durham County, NC that includes the city of Durham, from 1910 Durham County Library
Gastonia, NC is in Gaston County
Gatesville, NC is in Gates County
Halifax, NC is in Halifax County
Lincolnton, NC is in Lincoln County
Nashville, NC is in Nash County
Rutherfordton, NC is in Rutherford County
Warrenton, NC is in Warren County
Wilkesboro, NC is in Wilkes County
Wilson, NC is in Wilson County
Can you name any others? If you want to check out all 100 counties of content on our site, visit our county browse page on DigitalNC!
Thanks to our partners at the Henderson County Education History Initiative, decades of mid-century yearbooks are now available at DigitalNC! This batch contains almost fifteen issues of The Chief, the historic yearbook of Etowah High School in Henderson County. The yearbooks span from 1938 to 1960, recording student life as America prepared for, entered, and emerged from the second World War. They join thirty yearbooks already digitized in collaboration with Henderson County Education History Initiative, further expanding the area’s archival presence online.
Cover of the 1956 Etowah High School Yearbook
One of the most interesting recurring features within the new yearbooks is the annual feature on the North Carolina Apple King and Queen, the winners of a pageant celebrating North Carolina’s apple orchards. The pageant is split into several age divisions, with a junior, elementary, and senior king and queen announced each year and meticulously recorded within The Chief’s pages. The pageant would culminate in a King Apple Parade, which drew great crowds of spectators.
Interested in Henderson County history? You can find our entire Henderson County collection online at DigitalNC here, or visit our partners at the Henderson County Education History Initiative 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.
