We are happy to announce the addition of three new yearbooks from King’s Mountain High School in King’s Mountain, N.C., contributed by our partner the Mauney Memorial Library! These issues of Milestones cover the years 1970, 1971, and 1973 and depict classic ’70s fashion, hair, and wisdom. These yearbooks are full of snarky captions, allusions to the political issues of the era, and insights into the state of modern life.
Located just outside of Charlotte, King’s Mountain High School is still active today. Its rich history is well-represented on our site, with yearbooks dating from 1939, photographs, and programs. Do you recognize anyone you know? To view more yearbooks from other schools across North Carolina visit The North Carolina Yearbook collection linked here.
Three Charlotte-area high school yearbooks are now available on DigitalNC, thanks to our partners at the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Library! 1953 and 1954 yearbooks from West Mecklenburg High School have been added to our existing collection of West Mecklenburg High yearbooks. These volumes are now the earliest West Mecklenburg High available on the site. We are also excited to upload a new yearbook from Paw Creek High School. This 1951 yearbook depicts a slice of North Carolina teenage life in the early 1950s, and is our first from that decade.
Thanks to our partners at the Davidson County Public Library, we have made available a new batch of materials from Churchland School, Lexington High School, and various churches in Davidson County. These include yearbooks from Churchland School and Davidson County Community College, which give researchers a glimpse of life in mid-century North Carolina and may include familiar faces! Additionally, we have added new issues of The Lexhipep, Lexington High School’s student newspaper, as well as one 1944 issue of an anti-alcohol newspaper titled To-Morrow.
DigitalNC is happy to announce a new set of Southwestern Community College materials have been uploaded to the site! This is our fourth batch of SWCC records since welcoming them as a partner earlier this year, and this latest addition builds substantially upon our preexisting collection of SWCC materials. Located in Sylva, N.C. in Jackson County, SWCC has been operating for over fifty years and today offers over forty academic programs.
The college has historically been a major force in its community and has been heavily involved in the economic development of surrounding counties. As such, the bulk of this collection comprises SWCC annual reports from 1969-2000 and county development surveys from Jackson, Macon, and Swain counties dating from 1965-2002. These reports are comprehensive and incredibly informative for anyone seeking to know more about the economic and demographic situation in Western North Carolina in the twentieth century. More documents from Jackson County, including an annual report, Chamber of Commerce publication, a 1992 county study, and a genealogy book on the Richard McDowell Wilson descendants provide further insight into the region.
Additionally, this new batch includes many records relating directly to the college, including course catalogs, student handbooks, newsletters with student profiles, promotional literature, and much more. We are also excited to digitize commemorative materials for the college’s fortieth and fiftieth anniversaries, as well as a student-published literary magazine from 2023! Read more about the history of SWCC in our previous blog posts or on their website.
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.
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.
Digital NC has made available new materials from the First Presbyterian Church of Mount Holly. A long-standing institution in Gaston County, the First Presbyterian Church of Mount Holly has a wealth of records for genealogists and other researchers. These latest uploads span over one hundred years and add significantly to our pre-existing Mount Holly First Presbyterian collection.
This addition includes a batch of minute books covering the years 1887-1954 and weekly bulletins from 1976-1998. Minute books include registers of communicants, baptisms, marriages, and deaths. Bulletins provide an in-depth account of church activities and the staff, teachers, and congregants involved in them. Researchers can view the entirety of our Mount Holly First Presbyterian digital exhibit here and all of our North Carolina Community Contributors collections here.
Drawing of High Point Furniture Co. from High Point Illustrated, published in 1906
North Carolina is renowned for its high-quality furniture production, and the Piedmont city of High Point specifically is known as the “Furniture Capital of the World.” This moniker was earned during the late-nineteenth through mid-twentieth centuries, when the furniture industry was at its “high point.” Thanks to our partners at the High Point Museum, new materials now available on Digital NC give unique insight into this storied history with catalogs, Chamber of Commerce pamphlets, directories, and more. These documents roughly span the first half of the twentieth century, and provide a great deal of information on the prominent figures and companies in North Carolina’s furniture industry. Researchers can also visit High Point Museum’s Online Collections here to see more.
Couches from the Hi-Lite Illustrated catalog featuring Hi-Life of High Point, Inc. couch line in 1964
Thanks to our partners at the Edgecombe County Memorial Library, Digital NC has digitized new materials from Tarboro and Edgecombe County, North Carolina. These documents include architectural photographs; minutes, photographs, invitations, and other records from the Edgecombe Magazine Club; a new W.S. Clark ledger from 1909; a scrapbook from the Gettysburg Veterans Reunion of 1913; and a family Bible from the Bridgers family of Edgecombe County.
Additionally, we have added a new collection of materials from Dr. Moses A. Ray (1920-1995), a dentist, mayor, community advocate and leader in Tarboro. Dr. Ray was a graduate of Shaw University and Howard University, where he earned his doctorate in dentistry. After settling in Tarboro in 1946, he helped establish the Edgecombe Credit Union for African-Americans, was a trustee of the Edgecombe Technical Institute, led the East Tarboro Citizens League, was a member of the North Carolina Board of Transportation, and served on the Tarboro Town Council and as the first post-Reconstruction African-American mayor of Tarboro. This list comprises only a portion of the many leadership roles he held in Tarboro over the second half of the twentieth century. His community service was honored with many certificates and plaques that are now available as a part of the collection on Digital NC.
Visitors to the site can also see photographs from throughout Dr. Ray’s life depicting some of his work in the Tarboro community. We have also added a program from a 2015 Phoenix Historical Society educational program honoring his life of service, which further details some of his accomplishments like helping establish low-income housing and paved roads in East Tarboro. The Phoenix Historical Society records and promotes the African-American history of Edgecombe County; researchers can learn more online or in the East Carolina University Manuscript Collection. View the Dr. Moses Ray Collection here and see the rest of our Edgecombe County Memorial Library materials here.
Lee County Public Libraries has shared a large collection of materials relating to Sanford, Jonesboro, and the greater Lee County area, now available on Digital NC. Here at NCDHC, we are thrilled to work with a new partner and broaden our representation of “the heart of North Carolina.” Visitors to the site can now view nearly one hundred years of documents, including bulletins and directories; county fair and circus programs; personal records; Chamber of Commerce pamphlets; many photographs of residents, homes, and businesses; scrapbooks; school programs, records, and yearbooks; and more. Also available are forty-four years of minutes from the Pierian Club, a women’s club and Sanford’s oldest literary society. Records from these societies, common in the twentieth century, give unique insight into the activities of middle-class North Carolina women.
Sanford has historically been an important site for manufacturing and industry, and was established at the junction of the Raleigh and Augusta Air Line and Western Railroads. The early twentieth century saw rapid expansion, thanks to Sanford’s location on the railways and its official incorporation as a city in 1907, as well as the growth of manufacturing throughout the Piedmont. Tobacco in particular contributed to Sanford’s growth, which is reflected in many of the photographs and documents now available on the site. Many of the newly digitized materials are concerned with attracting more business to Sanford and advertising its various commercial enterprises. Sanford suffered economic downturns in the Great Depression and again in the 1960s and ’70s as tobacco and manufacturing declined.
Thanks to investment in economic diversification at the end of the twentieth century, Sanford has again become a vibrant and growing community with many manufacturing jobs and a diverse population of over 60,000 residents. Researchers can learn more about Lee County here and view all of our digitized materials from Lee County Public Libraries 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.
