Visitors to the North Carolina Yearbooks collection today will find a new and improved design. The new look makes it easy to pick the school you’re looking for from a list or by typing the name, and includes recent highlights from yearbooks on the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center’s Flickr collections. The biggest change is that there are now links at the top of the page to two important sections of the site: College and University Yearbooks and the recently-launched High School Yearbooks (more about this soon). Enjoy, and let us know what you think.
Viewing entries by Nick Graham
Richmond Community College Yearbooks Now Available Online
Student yearbooks from Richmond Community College are now available on DigitalNC in the North Carolina Yearbooks collection. The college was established in 1964 as Richmond Technical Institute, later changing its name to Richmond Technical College before becoming Richmond Community College in 1987, when the school joined North Carolina’s community college system.
There are 17 volumes of the Valiant now available online, ranging in date from 1970 to 1986. The original yearbooks are held by the J. Richard Conder Learning Resources Center at Richmond Community College.
K.C. Wows 1977 College Crowd in Wilson, Buffet Does Not
The 1977 edition of The Pine Knot, the yearbook from from Atlantic Christian College, gives an interesting glimpse into the musical tastes of students at the small school in Wilson, N.C., at the time.
The Student Government Association thought they had a sure hit on their hands when they booked the now widely-popular Jimmy Buffet to play a concert. Apparently they were ahead of their time.
So if there weren’t too many Parrotheads on campus in the 70s, what kind of music did they like?
Note the closing line: “Truly, no one since Fleetwood Mac aroused so much student enthusiasm at Atlantic Christian.”
Yearbooks from Atlantic Christian College (now Barton College) are now available in the North Carolina Yearbooks collection on DigitalNC.
Historic Yearbooks from Atlantic Christian College and Barton College Now Available Online
Student yearbooks from Atlantic Christian College and Barton College in Wilson, N.C., are now available on DigitalNC as part of the North Carolina Yearbooks Collection.
Atlantic Christian College was founded in 1902 by the North Carolina Christian Missionary Convention and is affiliated with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). In 1990, the school name was changed to Barton College in honor of Barton Warren Stone, a founde of the church who was active in eastern North Carolina. The yearbooks available online span the years 1910 through 1994. The original volumes are held by the Hackney Library at Barton College.
Historic Student Yearbooks from all University of North Carolina Universities Now Online
Big news for alumni of public universities in North Carolina: student yearbooks from all 15 University of North Carolina system universities are now freely available online. Yearbooks for 14 of the schools have been digitized by the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center and are available in the North Carolina Yearbooks collection on DigitalNC, while yearbooks from North Carolina State University are available through the excellent Historical State digital collection.
These yearbooks are terrific resources for students and alumni, as well as anyone interested in the evolution of higher education and student life in 20th-century North Carolina. There are a total of 774 volumes available from these schools, ranging in date from 1890 (The Hellenian, at UNC-Chapel Hill) to the present.
Pick your alma mater or hometown school from the links below and start browsing:
- Appalachian State University
- East Carolina University
- Elizabeth City State University
- Fayetteville State University
- NC Agricultural and Technical State University
- North Carolina Central University
- NC State University
- UNC Asheville
- UNC-Chapel Hill
- UNC Charlotte
- UNC Greensboro
- UNC Pembroke
- UNC Wilmington
- Western Carolina University
- Winston-Salem State University
Western Carolina University Yearbooks Now Available Online
Student yearbooks from Western Carolina University are now available on DigitalNC. Ranging in date from 1918 to 2005, the online collection includes 73 volumes. The yearbooks are from the Special Collections department in Hunter Library at Western Carolina.
Author David Sedaris in 1976
Western Carolina has many well-known graduates, including author David Sedaris, originally from Raleigh. He didn’t graduate, transferring to Kent State after a year or so, but he did stick around long enough to get his picture in the 1976 edition of The Catamount (p. 239). And it’s quite a picture.
Charlotte Toasts Independence in 1826
Unlike their neighbors in nearly Lincolnton, the citizens of Charlotte celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of American independence in a style more fitting the occasion. According to the report in the Catawba Journal from July 11, 1826, the festivities began with a march through town by the Lafayette Artillery, followed by a church service and dinner that featured “several of the venerable relics of the revolution.”
After the meal, “the cloth was removed, the following toasts were drunk, accompanied with discharges of cannon.” They drank a total of 24 toasts, lauding the leaders of the Revolution (including John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom would die on that day), the Army and Navy, the state and federal constitutions, “State Rights,” “Political and Religious Tolerance,” the University of North Carolina (“The pride and ornament of the State”), and the county of Mecklenburg.
Here’s the full list. If you’re going to a party tomorrow, I’m sure you’ll want to consider printing out a copy and impressing your fellow guests with your historically-accurate salutes.
Lincolnton, N.C. Quietly Celebrates the 50th Anniversary of American Independence
I found this announcement in the Catawba Journal from July 4, 1826, about the town of Lincolnton’s celebration of the Fourth of July. Fireworks and parades were not on the agenda — quite the opposite. The organizers wrote that “economy ought to characterize the celebration of the 4th of July, and that extravagance is contrary to the republican simplicity and patriotic spirit of ’76: therefore, a dinner will be furnished at a very moderate price, so that all may unite in feasting together on this glorious occasion.”
New Lesson Plans on LEARN NC Feature NC Digital Heritage Center Materials
Two new lesson plans on LEARN NC feature materials digitized and published by the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center:
- “Life On a North Carolina Military Base in Wartime,” a lesson plan for Grade 8 English Language Arts and Social Studies students, explores the daily lives of soldiers and civilians at the Basic Training Camp in Greensboro during World War II using the digitized copies of the base newspaper, which are held by the Greensboro Historical Museum.*
- “This Day in Headlines,” also for 8th graders, introduces students to primary source research by looking at the @ncdhc Twitter feed, which features a different historic headline from the North Carolina Newspapers collection every day.
LEARN NC, based at the School of Education at UNC-Chapel Hill, is a terrific resource for K-12 teachers and students, providing a wealth of free, online lesson plans, learning materials, and other resources. Look for more lesson plans (and podcasts!) from LEARN NC featuring NC Digital Heritage Center materials coming this summer and fall.
*[Update, January 2015. This newspaper can be viewed online in the Greensboro Historical Newspapers collection, hosted by UNC-Greensboro.]
More Examination Books From Old Salem Now Available
We’ve added twenty-one volumes to the collection of students’ examination books from Old Salem Museum & Gardens, bringing the total number to thirty-one. The examination books, which date from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, are full of handwriting samples, drawings, math problems, and compositions, both in English and in German, by Moravian students from Nazareth, Pa.
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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.