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Thanks to our partner Caswell County Public Library, we now have a wealth of family history and genealogy materials accessible online from their collection. The materials which range from large family trees to family history files, to published family histories can be found on DigitalNC here. For anyone doing family genealogy research and have Caswell County relatives or ancestors, the Library’s collection is a fantastic place to start.
One of the more fascinating items we scanned for Caswell County was a set of very very large family trees, one of them over 4 feet long! The family tree is for the Descendants of Captain Robert Blackwell (1742-1813) and wife, Zillah Rice (1746-1818) through their son Carter Blackwell (1775-1835) and wife, Isabella Bracken (1779-1835). Robert Blackwell was a captain in the Revolutionary War and was a member of the NC House of Commons from 1796-1797. He owned 1,394 acres of land which was called “Stony Fork”, on Moon’s Creek in Caswell County.
To learn more about Caswell County Public Library’s local history and genealogy collections, visit their website here. To learn more about what they hold on DigitalNC, visit their partner page here.
The North Carolina Digital Heritage Center recently got it’s time to shine in the spotlight on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s main website as part of the school’s focus on how research happens and is supported at UNC. The article on the NCDHC highlighted the fact that our work is “powered by funds from the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Library Services and Technology Act, a federal program created to support libraries and the services they offer. [Lisa] Gregory estimates that the efforts of the librarians, digital archives specialists and graduate students on her team help save smaller libraries, museums and other community groups more than $2 million per year in costs that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford.”
NCDHC staff prepping to shoot an objectBehind the cameraA closeup of one of the many items we have photographed for DigitalNCPhotographs taken courtesy of UNC Libraries Communication Department, Owen Osborne in May 2025
You can read the whole article on UNC’s main website here.
And if you want a behind the scenes look at our work, check out the video UNC made for us back in 2018 that shows some of our spaces and staff at work to digitize more North Carolina history!
Thanks to our partner Braswell Memorial Library in Rocky Mount, NC we now have over 500 photographs of Rocky Mount and the surrounding area on DigitalNC. The photographs date mainly from the 1930s to the 1970s and depict politicians, business people, women’s groups, students, and everyday citizens of Rocky Mount working and playing! A selection of the photographs are below but follow this link to see all 564 at once!
To view more photograph collections from across North Carolina, visit our North Carolina Images page and to learn more about our partner Braswell Memorial Library, visit their partner page.
The strength of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center are the connections and communities we have partnered with to share the history of our beautiful state, from the mountains, across the piedmont, and to the sea. Our staff has had heavy hearts for our fellow North Carolinians in the western parts of the state (WNC) since the devastating impact of Hurricane Helene on September 27th. The loss of life and communities, as well as the long road ahead for recovery and rebuilding is heartbreaking.
While there are many efforts to support this work, we cede information on how to help our western communities to organizations such as Blue Ridge Public Radio, the State of North Carolina, and local WNC libraries. The Blue Ridge Public Radio—who has been a voice for all the communities of WNC—along with the State of North Carolina have compiled great resources which can be viewed hereandhere. Local WNC libraries have shown the vitality and necessity of libraries in the wake of this tragic event by serving as a place for physical and internet connection, as well as a vetted source of information for the community to find where to get help, how to help, and how to move forward.
Resources for Libraries, Museums, and Other Cultural Heritage Organizations
The State Library of North Carolina has put together a comprehensive library guide on resources available to libraries, museums, and cultural heritage organizations – including information on the Heritage Emergency National Task Force (HENTF) which is co-sponsored by FEMA and the Smithsonian Institution and how to apply for assistance through them.
The NC Arts Disaster Relief Fund that is being run through the North Carolina Arts Foundation to provide funding and assistance to artists and arts organizations affected by Hurricane Helene.
Members of the public with questions about saving family heirlooms can contact the National Heritage Responders at NHRpublichelpline@culturalheritage.org.
Review Documenting in Times of Crisis: A Resource Kit, which provides templates and documents to assist cultural heritage responders and archivists in collecting materials on tragedies within their communities. For direct assistance, contact the SAA Crisis Collecting Assistance Team (CCAT), which offers remote assistance and general guidance on crisis collecting. CCAT volunteers include expert archivists who have all faced similar situations in leading and supporting their staff through processing and documenting tragedies great and small.
These resources and links are up to date as of October 10, 2024. We will update this post if more relevant resources come online for us to share. If our partners have any questions or need help navigating this time, please feel free to reach out to us at DigitalNC and we will help to connect you with the right resources.
As the lights come back on, roads are repaired, and water is restored, we wanted to help fellow North Carolina cultural heritage organizations by compiling a list of resources that provide information on getting help to repair damages to collections and the spaces that hold them when they are ready.
Cover of the 1910-1911 Magazine Club program – the topic that year was “The Study of North Carolina”
Program for the May 8, 1911 program on “Natural Resources of North Carolina”
Thanks to our partner Edgecombe County Memorial Library, Magazine Club of Tarboro yearly programs dating from 1910 to 1984 are now online. The Magazine Club is a literary club in Tarboro and each year they created a program that showed their monthly meeting topics, who was hosting, and what they were going to discuss. It was a wonderful way to see the various cultural topics being discussed by women in eastern North Carolina throughout the 20th century.
Section of the panorama of Main Street in Tarboro at the St. James St. intersection
We also digitized two panoramas of Main Street in Tarboro, one of each side of the street, that were done in preparation for remodel work being done to the facades along the streets.
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!
Two of the ledgers are from St. John’s Lodge in Wilmington, NC and include meeting minutes, member lists, and other correspondence over the period of 1907-1919. Repairs and other work done to the building the lodge resided in at the time is a common topic of conversation, among many other things. Some interesting items covered both in the St. John’s ledgers as well as one from Zion Lodge No. 81 in Trenton, NC are the payments made out of widows of deceased Masons, showing a way that the Masons provided an avenue of financial and other support when few social safety nets existed for women in particular.
Back of the front cover of the minutes of the St. John’s Lodge ledger covering 1907-1916
To view more materials we have digitized for the Grand Lodge, visit their partner page here. And to learn more about the North Carolina Masons today, you can visit their website.
Thanks to our partner Durham County Library, three indexes for the Independent Weekly newspaper (formerly The North Carolina Independent and now known as the INDY Week) are now online and full text searchable. The indexes cover 1983-2004 and can be found here.
To celebrate 14 years of NCDHC (on May 12, 2009 our first blog post went live with our first scanned collection), the staff of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center have all picked a favorite item from the collection to share. Check them out below – and then we invite you to visit digitalnc.org and find some favorite NC items yourself!
Lisa Gregory, Program Coordinator for the NCDHC
When pressed to pick one item (!) I have to go with the September 26, 1874 issue of the Fayetteville Educator. The Educator ran for a single year and was published by W. C. Smith who went on to publish a later title, the Charlotte Messenger. A few years ago while researching Black newspapers in North Carolina, I happened to run across a reference to the Educator as the earliest known Black newspaper in the state. Other sources generally cite the Star of Zion, which began a short time later and is still published today. With the help of some of our partners we were able to locate and add the Fayetteville Educator to DigitalNC. I picked this item because many 19th and 20th century newspapers written by and documenting the Black community are no longer extant or are extremely rare. For me, the fact that we can now share this online on behalf of our partners really encapsulates why we do what we do at NCDHC.
The educator (Fayetteville, N.C.) 1874-1875, September 26, 1874, Image 1, presented by the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center in partnership with The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture and Charlotte Mecklenburg Library.
Stephanie Williams, NCDHC Programmer
Still from Wadesboro, 1938 film by H. Lee Waters
Movies of Local People (H. Lee Waters): Wadesboro, 1938
H. Lee Waters traveled around the state in the 1930s and 1940s setting up a camera on streetcorners and filming townspeople. There are a handful of these films available on DigitalNC, and one of my favorites is from Wadesboro in 1938. Waters captured people just going about their daily business, which is fun for so many reasons–but my favorite part is seeing peoples’ personalities, and realizing that the way we react when we realize we’re on camera hasn’t changed in 85 years.
Kristen Merryman, Digital Projects Librarian
“Adult feeding bear by Fontana Lake”
Adult feeding bear by Fontana Lake
This is a photograph in our collection I always come back to because it really pulls together many things I love – bears, the gorgeous lakes of the NC mountains, and a good cookout in a park. This obviously portrays something many a park ranger would shun but I love the NC Variety Vacationland vibes it gives off! We digitized this photograph as part of a larger batch from the Graham County Public Library in Robbinsville, NC when we were there for an onsite scanning visit in 2018 and ourselves got to enjoy many lovely views of Fontana Lake and the surrounding mountains.
One of the things I love about our site is how many yearbooks, student handbooks, and students newspapers we have—I love seeing family and friends’ photos from when they were in school. These materials are where I see my own life reflected the most because they capture so many familiar places and people. It’s interesting to see how our schools have changed over the last century but also how so many things are apparently inherent to being a teenager. While I think all of our student publications are fantastic, this handbook is special to me for a few reasons. Not only is it a glimpse at my alma mater (go Deacs!), but it also features an excellent photo of one of my favorite professors in his early years of teaching.
Geoff Schilling, Newspaper Technician
Cat’s Cradle The DigitalNC item I chose is of a Chapel Hill location that means a great deal to me. The first four photos in this set are of the Cat’s Cradle’s early to late ‘80s location at 320 W. Franklin St. (now The Crunkleton), but the last three images are the reason I’m sharing it. Down this alley is their previous location at 405 1/2 W. Rosemary St., which they started occupying around 1971. In 1983, after the Cradle moved out, it became a venue called Rhythm Alley and they stuck around until 1987. At the end of that year the Skylight Exchange took over the space and in 2003 the one-and-only Nightlight came into existence. The Nightlight is an experimental music oasis where you can see everything from outsider folk legend Michael Hurley to Detroit techno heavyweight DJ Psycho. In addition to being my favorite venue in the world, it’s also the preferred stop of touring musicians from all over the country. The landscape of this “Rhythm Alley” has barely changed over the last half-century (save for a healthy amount of graffiti), but its legacy has grown with each new chapter.
Last year I had the opportunity to digitize some amazing slide images that were taken during several Chapel Hill Boy Scout Troop 835 and Girl Scout Troop 59 trips over the years courtesy of our partner Chapel Hill Historical Society. Many of the slides from these trips feature beautiful scenery and fun, but this particular photograph from the August 1973 Quebec trip is one of my favorite items on our site. In addition to being a great candid, I think it’s the individual’s sense of jollity and peacefulness portrayed in this moment of the trip that really makes it a top-pick of mine.
Just in time for their 50th! reunion, the 1972 Montreat College (then known as Montreat-Anderson College) yearbook, the 1972 Walrus Figleaf, is now on DigitalNC, joining many other past yearbooks, student newspapers, and other materials from the school. The yearbook is a work of art, both photography and drawing, and fun to look through even if you’re not celebrating your 50th reunion this year.
A reminder to all partners – even if we haven’t worked with you in a while, we at DigitalNC are always happy to fill in materials gaps when more are found! To view more yearbooks from around North Carolina, visit our North Carolina Yearbooks section of our site. To learn more about Montreat College, visit their website 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.
