Artifacts from Rockingham County Museum Now on DigitalNC

Posted on July 19, 2013 by Nick Graham

memorabilia

The Museum & Archives of Rockingham County recently worked with the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center to photograph and display online several historic artifacts from their collection. The Museum, located in the historic county courthouse in Wentworth, N.C., documents all aspects of county history through its extensive collections of artifacts, documents, and more.

 

Photographing museum artifacts can be challenging. The 19th-century wedding dresses from the museum were especially difficult to prepare for digitization. The Digital Production Center in Wilson Library has a dressmaker’s mannequin used for photographing historic clothing, but the dresses from the museum were so small — especially in the waist — that they wouldn’t fit. We ended up simply using a hanger to hold them up and used a little tissue paper to give them a fuller appearance. With expert help from one of the Digital Production Center photographers, we were able to capture images that show all of the fine details of the dresses and put them online so that users can zoom all the way in to the high resolution images. Here are some examples:

 

Other items photographed from the collection include milk bottles from local dairies, an old adding machine from a local store, Christmas cards from a local schoolteacher, and a fragile, somewhat scary-looking doll from the 1920s.

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Chatham Blanketeer Textile Newsletter Now Available Online

Posted on July 11, 2013 by Nick Graham

newspapers

Early issues of the Chatham Blanketeer, the company newsletter from the Chatham Manufacturing Company, are now available on DigitalNC. The Chatham Manufacturing Company was established in the late 1860s in Elkin. The company grew and expanded in the 20th century and would become famous for its wollen “Chatham Blankets.” Learn more about the company in the Encyclopedia of North Carolina, available on NCpedia.

The Blanketeers were produced for the company employees and contained more personal than business news. Columns reported primaily on social news and events and the mill baseball team was featured regularly. Issues from 1933 to 1940 are now online. The original copies are in the Elkin Public Library, a branch of the Northwestern Regional Library system.

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High School Yearbooks from King, N.C. Now Available on DigitalNC

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Nick Graham

yearbooks

Historic student yearbooks from the Stokes County town of King are now available in the North Carolina High School Yearbooks digital collection on DigitalNC. The online collection includes seventeen yearbooks from King High School, ranging in date form 1948 to 1964. The original yearbooks are in the collection of the King Public Library, which is a part of the Northwestern Regional Library system.

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How the News of Gettysburg Came to Fayetteville

Posted on July 3, 2013 by Nick Graham

newspapers

As the nation commemorates the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, I wanted to take a look at how people back home in North Carolina would have learned about the battle through their local newspaper. The North Carolina Newspapers collection on DigitalNC includes the Fayetteville Observer from the 1860s. The Observer was a paper of regional importance and reach and we can assume that many people in eastern North Carolina would have looked to it for news of the war.

In the summer of 1863, the Observer was still publishing twice a week. Following a common practice of newspapers of the time, many of the reports from the war were excerpts or summaries gleaned from other newspapers. The paper published on July 2, 1863, the day after the start of the battle, contained no news of Gettysburg, but did include reports from the New York Herald of the Confederate army in Pennsylvania:

More recent news, from June 30, came from the Richmond Examiner:

The newspaper published on July 9 finally contained news of the battle, but the reports were inconclusive at best. The Observer reprinted reports from Richmond and Baltimore papers which described the first day’s battle, but were unable to say anything definitive about the outcome of the battle. The latest news available at the time was the evening issue of the Baltimore American from July 3, which wrote, “there must have been a great battle fought yesterday afternoon and evening (July 2d) as heavy cannonading could be heard at Parkton, Fredericksburg and Harrisburg, from noon to 9 o’clock at night, when it ceased. A gentleman who came down this morning (July 3d) from Parkton, says that the cannonading was resumed again at daylight this morning with such force and volume as to almost make the ground tremble.”

It was not until the paper published on July 13 did the readers in Fayetteville begin to get a sense of the enormity of the battle and its tragic outcome for the Confederate troops:

Nearly an entire page is given to accounts of the battle culled from multiple newspapers. These reports often conflicted greatly, with the news clearly exaggerated to favor whatever side the editors supported. The Baltimore American said that “rebel losses are estimated at 20,000” and that “the enemy is in full retreat, demoralized and almost disorganized.” The Richmond Enquirer acknowledged that “the enemy are said to have fought well” and that “our loss is estimated at ten thousand.” The Richmond paper also noted the significance of the battle, but still put its own spin on the news: “The fighting of these four days is regarded as the severest of the war and the slaughter unprecedented; especially this is so of the enemy.”

The editor of the Observer offered thoughts on the battle and its aftermath in the editorial section of the July 13 paper, acknowledging the grim news but remaining defiant in the end:

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More Stanly County Museum Materials Added to DigitalNC

Posted on June 18, 2013 by Nick Graham

memorabilia photos

We’ve recently completed digitization of more materials from the Stanly County Museum in Albemarle, N.C. New materials include historic photos, more notebooks and ledgers from 19th-century doctor F. J. Kron, and a few new scrapbooks. One of our favorites was the scrapbook from the “Stanly Squares” a square dancing club in the 1970s and 1980s.

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Palmer Memorial Institute Yearbooks Available on DigitalNC

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Nick Graham

underrepresented yearbooks

Four student yearbooks from the Palmer Memorial Institute in Sedalia, N.C., are now available online at DigitalNC as part of the North Carolina High School Yearbooks collection. The Palmer Institute was a private school that operated from 1902 to 1971, educating more than 2,000 African American students. The site of the school is now home to the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum, a North Carolina Historic Site.

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Lincoln County High School Yearbooks Now Available on DigitalNC

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Nick Graham

yearbooks

Early student yearbooks from Lincolnton High School and Union High School are now available in the North Carolina High School Yearbooks collection on DigitalNC, thanks to the Lincoln County Public Library. There are 55 volumes online, ranging in date from 1923 to 1962. The image below is from the 1960 edition of The Pine Burr, from Lincolnton High School.

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Forsyth County High School Yearbooks Now Available on DigitalNC

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Nick Graham

yearbooks

Early high school yearbooks from several Winston-Salem schools are now available in the North Carolina High School Yearbooks collection on DigitalNC. There are 48 volumes online, ranging in date from 1911 to 1963. The schools represented are:

• James A. Gray High School, 1940-1955
• John W. Hanes High School, 1938-1955 
• North High School, 1936-1937
• Richard J. Reynolds High School, 1923-1963
• South High School, 1936-1939
• Winston-Salem City High School, 1911-1922  

The original yearbooks are in the North Carolina Room at the Forsyth County Public Library in Winston-Salem. 

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Scrapbooks from the Northwestern Regional Library Now Available Online

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Nick Graham

memorabilia scrapbooks

Scrapbooks and other historic materials from the Northwestern Regional Library system are now available on DigitalNC. The online resources include:

• World War II scrapbooks and a collection of church photos from the Alleghany Public Library
• A 1943 Junior Chamber of Commerce scrapbook from the Elkin Public Library
• Scrapbooks documenting World War II veterans and a local high school from the King Public Library
• Clipping files and a city directory from the Mount Airy Public Library
• Several scrapbooks from the Yadkin County Public Library 

The photographs, clippings, and stories contained in the scrapbooks give us a fascinating glimpse into small-town life in northern North Carolina in the middle of the 20th century.

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North Carolina City Directories Collection Continues to Grow

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Nick Graham

directories news

The North Carolina City Directories collection in DigitalNC continues to grow. There are now more than 900 directories online, spanning more than a century. Published from early 1860s to the early 1960s, the directories cover cities and towns across North Carolina. There are 107 cities and 63 counties represented in the online collection. Most of the directories that were digitized come from the North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill, though several other libraries have contributed copies, including the Durham County Library, Duke University, the Forsyth County Public Library, and the Hickory Public Library.

We are making an effort to include every available North Carolina city directory published through 1963 (later editions have a different copyright status). If you know of city directories in North Carolina libraries that are not included on this site, please let us know.

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