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Since 1930, The Sanford Herald has been a leading news and information source for central North Carolina counties including Lee, Harnett, Chatham, and Moore. Still publishing today, their website states their mission being to “inform, challenge and celebrate the communities we touch.”
Taken by newspaper staff in some of the paper’s earliest years, this batch of photographs provides a wonderful look into life in and around the Sanford area. Agriculture in particular is heavily featured throughout with images showing tobacco in various stages, farmers, fields, and farm animals. Along with these are photographs showcasing local groups, individual residents, and events. While we unfortunately do not have any of the corresponding issues of The Sanford Herald available to be able to read the articles that accompany these photographs, nearly all photographs had the issue date and page written on the back.
Thanks to our partner, Buncombe County Public Libraries, our newspaper collection has gained a new title, the Mountain Xpress published in Asheville, North Carolina. This batch includes 68 issues of the paper from its very first “opener” issue in July 1994 to November 1995.
In their opener issue, they announce that the Mountain Xpress is a paper people will “reach for with pleasure and anticipation, every week, for free; a paper that tells you what’s going on and what’s going down, that knows how to be lively, outspoken, authoritative and fair; a paper that is uniquely Western North Carolinian [July 1, 1994, page 3].” In addition to providing comprehensive calendars of events, the Mountain Xpress includes reports on local news written by professional and nationally recognized, WNC journalists.
Highlighting the beauty of the North Carolina Arboretum in their April 5, 1995 issue, the paper breaks their typical pattern of published predominately in black and white. Along with highlighting the arboretum as a whole, the feature details the construction and history of what becomes the North Carolina Arboretum. The land the arboretum is built on is referred to as Bent Creek and was inhabited by Native Americans around 14,000 years ago. The Cherokee visited a seasonal camp there into the 1830s before “Colonel W. H. Thomas persuaded them to relinquish the area [April 5, 1995, page 14].” Once the land was vacated, white settlers bought and worked the land until it was mostly an eroded watershed. Years later, George Vanderbilt bought the Bent Creek watershed as an addition to his Biltmore Estate. He used it to experiment with the the newly developing German scientific forestry methods at the time.
The land was purchased from Vanderbilt in 1917 to be part of the Pisgah National Forest. With the Bent Creek Research Forest established in 1921, restoration of eroded fields and replanting trees continues into the 1930s. A majority of this restoration work was completed by the Civilian Conservation Corps, specifically the individuals who worked at CCC Vance.
In 1984, local civic leaders in Buncombe County, garden groups, and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill managers, submitted a proposal for an arboretum in the Asheville area. Recognizing the value it would have in the western part of the state, the North Carolina General Assembly allotted $250,000 for the development and building of an arboretum. The Bent Creek site was chosen from 25 candidates in the region, but won because the area was unrestricted by urban development; accessible to attractions such as the Blue Ridge Parkway and Biltmore Estate; it formed its own watershed; and, of course, the land was “free” (available from the federal government on a long-term lease). Today, the North Carolina Arboretum boasts 65 acres of cultivated gardens along with 10+ miles of hiking and biking trails, rotating exhibits, a variety of family-friendly nature activities.
Thanks to our partner, the Sanford Woman’s Club, six new scrapbooks with materials related to the Sanford Woman’s Club, Sanford Junior Woman’s Club, and community projects in Sanford are now available to view online.
From 1952 to 1959, cities and towns in Carolina Power and Light Company (CP&L) service areas—including South Carolina—competed with one another for cash awards in the Finer Carolina community improvement contest. In the seven years it was active, the competition incited 4,600 projects aimed at attracting new industry, improving cultural opportunities, upgrading municipal facilities, and more. These improvements were typically documented by the community’s Finer Carolina committee (or similar group) in the form of a scrapbook. Over the years we have digitized several of these scrapbooks, including several from Burgaw and Asheboro. We are excited to share that with our latest batch we now have the Finer Carolina scrapbook for the first ever winner of CP&L’s Finer Carolina contest in North Carolina—Sanford!
For the first Finer Carolina contest, participants had one year—from November 1, 1951 to November 1, 1952—to make their community improvements. Sanford selected construction of new buildings, public school improvements, recreational improvements, industrial and commercial expansion, and improvements initiated by community effort and a program of clean-up and beautification as their broad categories of improvement. Under each of these were several projects headed by one to two community members. A newspaper clipping in the 1951-1952 Finer Carolina Project Sanford Scrapbook lists the proposed projects for each category:
Construction of new buildings: construction of an addition to Lee County Hospital, new woman’s club building, and Central High School library building, along with the landscaping for the buildings.
Public school improvements (all at Central High School): completion of the football stadium, initial effort of developing a botanical garden, construction a new baseball field, and landscaping.
Recreation improvements: installation of irrigated grass greens on Sanford Municipal golf course, construction of a recreational park at the municipal swimming pool, development of McIver Park, and persuading the state highway commission to extend Washington Avenue to give access from what was the “colored residential areas of the city to the colored playground.”
Industrial and commercial expansion: construction of a new industrial building for Schneierson Co., modernization of storefronts, landscaping of grounds of Saco-Lowell shops, and creation of a special committee to obtain new industries for the Sanford area.
Cleaning up and beautification: put up attractive signs advertising Sanford on the highway, sponsorship of civic clubs of a clean-up campaign among property owners and residents, clean-up of city and county-owned property, railroad and bus station property clean-up and special clean-up of service stations, hotels, and stores, and installation of guide curbs and safety zones in front of service stations.
View more progress and finished products in Sanford that won them the Finer Carolina contest, like the building of the new Sanford Woman’s Club building seen above, in the 1951-1952 Finer Carolina Project Sanford Scrapbook.
For centuries, life insurance has been utilized to provide financial assistance to beneficiaries of deceased individuals to help pay end-of-life costs and maintain financial security after an individual has passed. With changes and events in the United States such as the Panic of 1837 and passing of laws allowing women the right to purchase insurance policies in the 19th century, the life insurance industry saw a huge boom which carried into the 20th century. Despite the need to grow their policy holder numbers, life insurance companies in the decades following the formal end of enslavement, there was little, if any, interest to market to the Black community. And the few companies that did offer policies to Black individuals were unaffordable.
In 1898, seven Black community leaders in Durham founded the North Carolina Mutual and Provident Association to provide affordable life insurance to Black individuals. The company did more than just provide life insurance policies however. Rooted in the tradition of fraternal aid societies at the time and a sense of corporate social consciousness and responsibility, N.C. Mutual functioned as an instrument of social welfare and served as a center for Black politics, education, and philanthropy. Their “Double-Duty Dollar” concept took money from insurance sales and put them back into the Black community. This concept resulted in the building and uplifting of Black communities through jobs, investments, loans, community leadership, as well as support of community projects and charities. Today, the North Carolina Mutual Insurance Agency remains the oldest and largest active Black-owned life insurance company in the nation.
The photograph of the N. C. Mutual Glee Club from 1929 includes prominent Durhamite, Bessie Alberta Johnson Whitted (also referred to as “Miss Bess” and Mrs. B. A. J. Whitted, seated first on the left). She was one of the company’s first female employees, holding the position of cashier alongside bookkeeper and eventually assistant treasurer. Miss Bess was famous for helping build Black Wall Street in Durham, paving the way for women in business, musical direction, and her involvement in the community. She served as the advisor to the Junior Activities Committee of the Algonquin Club, president of the local chapter of Iota Phi Lambda Sorority for business women, and director of both the N. C. Mutual Glee Club and St. Joseph AME Church choir.
Thanks to our partner, Bessemer City History and Art Society, a batch containing an additional 3,500 pages of TheBessemer City Record and The Tri-City Record are now available on DigitalNC! These issues span from 1984-1985 and 1987-1989 and focus heavily on highlighting local news, events, and scenes about town. The issues in this batch published near Halloween feature fabulous costumes worn for the “Halloween social season” along with spookily decorated yards.
Bessemer City Record editor Lois Smith is seen here in her Egyptian Queen costume along with “Witch” Hazel Harmon, Ernie Kincaid as a California raisin, and first place costume winner Mrs. Florence Gossage. Mrs. Gossage, dressed as a flapper girl, designed and decorated her outfit with numerous handmade motifs.
In 1985, the title of Halloween House was given to a residence on Iowa Avenue in Bessemer City. The yard featured “everything that could be thought of with a Halloween theme” — which included a pumpkin man, corn stalks, jack-o’-lanterns, as well as a witch and some ghosts suspended from the roof. Featured in both 1987 (below) and 1989 (disgusted ghost), the residence at the corner of Texas and 11th Street appears to have taken the title of Halloween House.
The Hickory Log as a yearbook/annual refers to three different buildings used for Hickory’s high school between 1917 to today. The area’s high school was first named Hickory High School, but was changed to Claremont High School when the school relocated in the early 1920s. The name change brought about a period of skirting, parenthesizing and misuse of the high school name as people continued to refer to the school as Hickory High School. Nearly 50 years later, in 1972, the school was once again relocated. This time, however, the Hickory Board of Education agreed to officially name the new school Hickory High School.
The first school building, located at 432 4th Avenue SW Hickory, NC 28603, opened September 17, 1917. When the school relocated, the remaining building became the Green Park Elementary School before serving as the Hickory City Schools administration building.
The second of these buildings, named Claremont Central High School, was located at 243 3rd Avenue NE Hickory, NC 28601. In 1919, the former site of Claremont Female College (which operated from 1880 to 1916) was donated by the Corinth Reformed Church to the city contingent on the construction of a school. The deed was signed for the high school on January 26, 1924; however, it did not open until October 9, 1925 under the name Claremont Central High School. The school remained at this location for 47 years until it was again relocated in 1972. Twelve years after the relocation, the former Claremont Central High School was designated as a local landmark by the City of Hickory and listed on the National Register of Historic Places a year later.
In 1972, Hickory High School’s third building opened at 1234 3rd Street NE Hickory, NC 28601 and is still in operation today.
The Craven County Farm Life School was the first to be established in the state after the Farm Life School law was passed by the North Carolina State Legislature in March 1911. Though growth was slow at first, the school soon saw a rapid increase in their student enrollment. By 1918, they outgrew their one brick building which served as a boys’ and girls’ dormitory as well as an administration building. A five room administration building was built using money borrowed from state building funds which were paid off using county funds. The new building, however, appears to not have alleviated the space issue at all. Less than 12 months later, four rooms were added to one of the buildings. Then, in 1920, a $100,000 bond issue was made by Craven County for the building of the boys’ dormitory.
In the 1921-1922 school term, the school opened with 131 students enrolled and the following equipment: a brick dormitory for girls, boys dormitory, administration building, a dairy, wash house for girls, farmer’s cottage, barn, and stock buildings. In the 1922 yearbook, which can be viewed here, the writers point out that the students used to be only from the town and boarders, but students began coming from twelve miles away in trucks. Over the years, the curriculum shifted from agriculture to general high school education and by 1941 students were no longer required to reside on campus and instead commuted from the surrounding area. In 1971, the Craven County Farm Life School was closed and Vanceboro students began attending West Craven High School.
Hopalong Cassidy is a fictional character created by Clarence E. Mulford who was brought to life by actor William Boyd who appeared as the character in 66 movies between 1935 and 1943. When television started to become popular in the late 1940s, Hopalong Cassidy became the first cowboy hero series with Boyd making 106 television shows and 104 radio shows.
Unlike Mulford’s books, Boyd portrayed the character as a clean living cowboy who didn’t smoke, drink, curse, or gamble. The cowboy’s popularity amongst children’s Western heroes allowed Boyd to become “King of Cowboy Merchandisers.” He endorsed over 2,000 items, several of which can be seen in this batch, including a lunchbox, thermos, shirt, commemorative plates, and even a board game!
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.
