Front page of the August 19, 1938 issue of the Roanoke Beacon and Washington County News discussing the dedication of the Albemarle Sound Bridge.

Additional issues of The Roanoke Beacon and Washington County News, published out of Plymouth, NC, are now online thanks to funding from the North Caroliniana Society. This newspaper was recommended for digitization by the Washington County Library which is part of Pettigrew Regional Library. With these additions, you can now search the newspaper from 1899 to 1956.

The News published articles about agriculture (particularly cotton and seafood), social events, politics, and the local schools. Town Topics and Society columns are a great source for the personal news of Washington County residents. There is also coverage of national and international news, which increases through World War II. During that time you’ll see articles that describe the town’s preparations in case of invasion, that recount the activities of local soldiers, and that call for frugality and the purchase of war bonds. 

Later issues in this run cover the aftermath of World War II, distribution of the polio vaccine to Washington County residents, and the debate around segregated schools. 

You can view all of the issues of The Roanoke Beacon and Washington County News available on our site through the newspaper’s landing page.

The Tryon Daily Bulletin’s tagline is the World’s Smallest Daily Newspaper. This masthead is from Aug 15, 1945, with Seth M. Vining as editor.

Issues of the Tryon Daily Bulletin from 1935-1936 and 1942-1951 have been added to DigitalNC, thanks to funding from the North Caroliniana Society. This title was recommended and advocated for by the Polk County Public Libraries.

The Bulletin is a physically smaller paper both in dimensions and page length, and it actually boasts the tagline “The World’s Smallest Daily Newspaper” to this day. Despite (or perhaps because of) its size, the Bulletin focus mostly on local news. You’ll find items about church, school, and sporting events, and articles about marriages, illnesses, births and deaths without many syndicated articles or ads to sift through. As a daily, the paper covered smaller details than you might normally see, as specific as a list of books added to the library. 

The Curb Reporter column graphic beginning in the mid 1940s.

The issues scanned from 1942-1951 cover World War II and its immediate aftermath. Unlike many of the Bulletin’s peers, the front page doesn’t focus on national news but rather the war’s impact on the local community. There are calls for donations of items for soldiers, articles announcing events for soldiers visiting from Camp Croft (which was located near Spartanburg, SC), and lists of Tryon-area soldiers and their comings and goings. The paper features a regular front page column called “Curb Reporter” which is a compiled list of brief local, national, and international news items.

You can view all of the issues we’ve scanned of the Tryon Daily Bulletin on the newspaper’s landing page. All of the items we’ve scanned on behalf of the Polk County Public Libraries can be found from the Libraries’ contributor page.

May 2, 1936 front page of the Kings Mountain Herald.

Today we’re pleased to share that additional issues of the Kings Mountain Herald newspaper have been added to DigitalNC. Issues online now date from 1914-2015 (with some years missing in the 20s and early 30s). It’s one of the most complete runs of community papers available on our site.

Some of the new issues were digitized from microfilm thanks to funding from Mauney Memorial Library. When a partner would like more newspapers digitized than we can provide at no cost, they are welcome to provide funding to subsidize getting them online. The new issues from microfilm span 1918-1919, 1935-1937, 1955-1957, 1959-1965 and 1967. 

In addition to the microfilmed issues, we worked on some extremely fragile issues from 1914-1919. The Library received these as a gift in 2020 and contacted us asking about digitization. We’ve seen a lot of crumbling newspapers in our time, but these may win the prize. Take a look at the image below which shows how they looked as we gently laid them out for scanning.

The December 24, 1914 front page of the Kings Mountain Herald.

Like most of the print newspapers we scan, these were shot from above. We attempted to piece back together larger fragments. Each page was carefully turned, but there was quite a bit of “chaff.”  It’s impossible to digitize an item like this without flaking page edges but the staff at Mauney Memorial Library gave us permission to proceed for the sake of making this physical object useful. These may be the only known extant issues from those years, which document World War I and its immediate aftermath, and they are now broadly available.

You can view all of the issues of the Kings Mountain Herald, and also see all of the items digitized for Mauney Memorial Library on the Library’s contributor page.

The February 4, 1910 evening edition of The Charlotte News.

From the December 19, 1888 front page of The Charlotte News.

We’ve added a whopping 10,000+ issues of The Charlotte News to DigitalNC. The paper was published daily, and these issues date from 1888-1922 (minus 1911, which has been on our website since 2012). In its first years, you’ll find front-page news under the column “Local Ripples” that would probably surprise Charlotteans today – such small details as the names of people renting certain houses, the number of people being married on the next day, or the specific ailments of local residents. The front page from December 19, 1888 even details a confrontation between a local resident and a billy goat (at right). 

Starting in 1909 you will find not only the News but also The Evening Chronicle, which was published separately for a number of years and then merged with The Charlotte News to become The Charlotte News and Evening Chronicle. In 1910 the front page boasted that it was “the only paper between Atlanta and Washington to issue morning, evening, and Sunday editions.”

With so many editions to fill, it’s not surprising that the paper covered a wide variety of international, national, and local topics. You’ll find a lot of syndicated content, but also statewide and Charlotte-area news and advertisements. When there are multiple issues per day, the morning paper contains more local and statewide news and advertisements, whereas the evening paper includes financial reports, sporting news, the women’s page, and syndicated content. 

You can view all of the issues we have online of The Charlotte News on its landing page, or browse our entire newspaper collection here.

The front page of the April 25, 1940 of the Goldsboro Herald, which shows articles about local Black schools, the Goldbugs, and a prelude to war.

Thanks to the Wayne County Public Library, we’re sharing issues of the Goldsboro Herald from 1936-1940 on DigitalNC. Digitization of these issues was funded by the North Caroliniana Society. 

This ad is one of many targeting Wayne County residents during the heyday of rural electrification in North Carolina. It’s from the January 12, 1939 issue of the Goldsboro Herald.

The Goldsboro Herald is full of local information with little syndicated content. You’ll see stories related to the tobacco market, crime, and personal news items like births, visits, and deaths. Special columns cover Baker, Eureka, Pikeville, and Patetown – all in Wayne County. Also prominent is sports news, with coverage of the Goldsboro “Goldbugs” baseball team frequently right on the front page. As the paper progresses into 1940 the front page increasingly has news related to world events leading up to the second World War.

It’s unclear how long the Herald ran – if you have more information on this let us know in the comments. You can view more items from Wayne County Public Library on their contributor page, including links to a number of other Goldsboro newspapers. 

Today’s post announces the addition of 9 issues of Bladen County newspapers. Much of our newspaper digitization relies on newspapers microfilmed by the State Archives of North Carolina, which has a long history of preserving the state’s papers in film format. To date, only 9 Bladen County issues have been filmed, and we’re pleased to add them to the site on behalf of the Bladen County Public Library.

Bladen County is located in the southeastern part of the state. It’s county seat is Elizabethtown. The newspaper additions are as follows:

Elizabethtown

• The Beacon, 2 issues from 1888
• Bladen Bulletin, October 8, 1885 and August 12, 1886
• Cape Fear Lance, May 26, 1899

Clarkton

• The Bladen Journal, 3 issues from 1910
• The Clarkton Express, January 17, 1917

The newspapers are all a varied mix of national and local news along with ads, with the Cape Fear Lance appearing to have the most local content. 

Digitization of these issues was funded in part by the North Caroliniana Society. Visit the homepage of the Bladen County Public Library to learn more. You can also search all of our newspapers on our North Carolina Newspapers landing page or visit our Bladen County page to see other items related to that part of the state.

This paragraph from the May 26, 1899 issue of The Cape Fear Lance states that you could get a newspaper subscription in trade for “anything it can handle.”

Thanks to a nomination from the Neuse Regional Library, we’ve added 1,098 issues of the Jones County Journal, a newspaper published out of Trenton, N.C. This is one of only two newspaper titles we have for Jones County. Issues date from volume one, number one, published in 1949 through April 1971. Because the Journal was digitized from microfilm shot with high contrast, many of the photographs are not very clear but the text is quite sharp.

The tagline for the paper when it began through 1954 was “A Better County Through Improved Farm Practices” and much of the news in the earlier years revolves around agricultural methods and needs. There are also editorials,  personal news columns, and coverage of local events from election results to church picnics and barbecues. There’s quite a bit of coverage of the more populous Lenior County, perhaps in part due to the fact that the paper was published by The Lenoir County News Company. 

The Journal is focused on local news, from the front page on. For a number of years Maysville and Trenton have their own sections. Reporters describe national and international events through their impact on Jones County residents. For example, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the front page headline reads “Trenton Area Shares Nation’s Shock on President’s Murder.” Coverage of the Vietnam War is shared in the same way, like the Jones County veteran given half of the newspaper’s front page to describe his experience. Papers full of this kind of unique local reporting, with little to no syndicated content (content that a publisher paid for and was reused in newspapers throughout the world), are especially vital for research.

Digitization of the Jones Journal was possible thanks to generous funding from the North Caroliniana Society. You can find more materials we’ve scanned on behalf of the Neuse Regional Library on their contributor page. You can search thousands of issues of North Carolina newsppaers from all over the state using our  Newspapers landing page.