From Blowing Rock High School, we’ve added four volumes of The Breezes from 1953 to 1956. From Cove Creek High School (in Sugar Grove), we’ve added three volumes of The Coveteer from 1952-1956. From Boone, we’ve also got 18 more editions of The Laurel from Appalachian High School (1947-1965) and seven more editions of The Musket from Watauga High School (1966-1972).
Even though these yearbooks might make it seem like high school was just yesterday, there have been at least a few changes to the curriculum since the 1960s and ’70s. For instance, the Business Department at Watauga High School was much more typewriter-centric than business programs today. Some of the classes taught in 1970 included Typing (I and II), Shorthand, Bookkeeping, General Business, and Business English. Perhaps the focus on problem-solving skills has remained the same, though—the caption for the photo above reads, “Tony Hagler, and member of one of the typing classes, seems deeply involved with the completion of his problems.”
Wilson C. Daniel, c. 1863, who served in the 42nd Regiment (like Tom Dula).
Margaret Ann Wesson Tesh, 1868. An example of what white women might have looked like in the Reconstruction era.
We’ve got another batch of audio materials available thanks to our partner, Wilkes Community College. This set of 16 interviews and oral histories was originally recorded on reel-to-reel tapes, and they span from 1959 to 1979.
One of the recordings in this batch is a retelling of the legend of Tom Dula, popularized in 1959 by The Kingston Trio in their version of the folk song “Tom Dooley.” The general outline of the story is that Dula, upon returning home to Wilkes county after serving in the army of the Confederacy, had a relationship with at least two women, Laura (or Laurie) Foster and Ann Melton. It is suspected that this relationship triangle went bad and that Dula murdered Foster. He then attempted to flee into Tennessee. However, he was arrested and returned to North Carolina, where he was found guilty both by a jury in Iredell county and later by the North Carolina Supreme Court. He was sentenced to death in Statesville and hanged on May 1, 1868, which became the basis for the song.
The version of the story told in this recording (perhaps by Tom Ferguson, though the tape is unclear), also made in 1959, leans more into pastoral genre than other popular accounts. The speaker devotes a great deal of time to describing the home of Dula and his mother, which he says many in the area remember. He describes a lean-to on the side of the house (which he guesses was built around 1850) where Tom Dula stayed. He also describes the house as sitting among “a profusion of honeysuckle and roses.”
However, this account deserves a little bit of scrutiny, since it tends to romanticize and draw from the speaker’s imagination. The storyteller describes Dula as a musician who carried a violin around his neck and who only participated in the Civil War insofar as to entertain his fellow soldiers, though we know he was a member of the 42nd Regiment of the North Carolina Infantry. He also asserts that Dula was handsome and popular with the ladies, which, of course, makes it impossible that he was a “scoundrel” (Ferguson is not a Jane Austen fan, I take it).
Zebulon B. Vance c. 1875 (courtesy of the Library of Congress).
In addition to asserting Dula’s innocence, this version of the story describes Foster as an “innocent” girl with a talent for weaving, though author John Foster West asserts that Dula, Foster, and Melton were all infected with syphilis. Sadly, little is recorded about either Foster or Melton, and—perhaps tragically—Foster’s portrait now hangs beside Dula’s in the Tom Dooley Museum.
One final surprising detail about this story is that Dula was represented by none other than former North Carolina Governor and U.S. Senator Zebulon Baird Vance. Though biographer Clement Dowd mentions that Vance did not always prepare well for his cases, the storyteller in this version lauds Vance for coming to Dula’s rescue and attributes the two convictions to the “carpetbaggers” who made up the jury.
Ironically, one of the events featured in the 1977 edition of The Lighted Lamp is “the night the lights went out.” The good news is that the event refers to the spring prom rather than a night at the hospital, and the power was eventually restored. The description of the event sets the scene well, describing students preparing for the big night:
From the night the lights went out, The Lighted Lamp (1977)
“They worked really hard while at Butner making hula girls, treasure chests, and other various decorations. Afterwards, they vigorously scrubbed the carpets and the walls that had been splattered with paint. And then they had to lug all of this back to High Point in the back of an El Camino in pouring down rain.”
Sadly, once everyone arrived in their formalwear, there was no electricity, “all because of a dumb old storm.” For an hour and a half, the prom progressed in “romantic candlelight” until the power came back on.
This photo, from the 1955 edition of The Wag, is called “Jubilant Conference Champions,” since this team was the Eastern AA champion of 1954 and the runner-up to the state championship.
It seems like the 1954 Red Devils were a bit stronger than the 1949 team, which published its season of scores in the 1950 edition of The Wag. Even though the team was victorious against Siler City, Draper, Mebane, Hartsel, Durham County, and E.M. Holt, they also took some tough losses against Roxboro and Oxford. 1949 was also apparently the year that the team faced off against Trinity in the Hosiery Bowl.
Vaiden Whitley, now East Wake High School, is located in Wendell, N.C. in Wake County. These yearbooks show the school back in 1971-1973, also known as some of the most fashionable years for both yearbooks and student basketball uniforms.
While these games may not have been quite as exciting as some of the ones in this year’s NCAA tournament, they do illustrate North Carolinian’s longstanding cultural obsession with the sport. In 1971, the Vaiden Whitley men’s team only came out on top in 8/19 games—not quite as good as the women’s team, which won 7/13. Still, the coaches called it a “profitable season.”
Like in the previous batch, these scrapbooks focus on newspaper clippings from a variety of local papers that ran news about Mitchell. For example, in 1935, The Statesville Record ran a full page honoring the 26 graduates, which lists their names and photos in yearbook style. The accompanying article notes that Mary Logan King was awarded a “ten-dollar gold piece” for typing. Her typing speed was apparently 72 words per minute, which is still impressive by today’s standards—and then you remember she was doing it on a typewriter.
As a prequel to the praise of Mitchell’s traveling choir in 1939, there is also news of Davidson College’s glee club visiting to perform. According to the news bulletin accompanying the photo, “The Davidson College Glee club is well known all over the state and a large crowd is expected to attend the concert.” It sounds like the MCC choir had a little bit of musical competition.
Southwestern Community College is based in Sylva, N.C., in Jackson county. Today, it advertises itself as the only community college with a scientific partnership with NASA. The materials in this batch also show its history of teaching technical skills, especially on this poster showing students modifying a car into a limousine. They also feature some of the academic accomplishments of students in the Phi Theta Kappa organization, a college honor society. The Alpha Eta Nu chapter at Southwestern had the opportunity to travel around the country for conferences, evidenced by the memorabilia in their 1985 scrapbook.
From “Pen and Ink,” 1991
The artistic and literary talents of past Southwestern students and faculty are also on display in the issues of the school’s literary magazine. One poem, written by Eugenia L. Johnson and apparently published in World Treasury of Great Poems (1980), is called “Me.” It begins: “Me, me, me, / Who am me / I know me.”
Amazingly, it is accompanied by this illustration of a person dabbing, a reminder that the dance move was popular long before Cam Newton (quarterback for the Carolina Panthers) did it in 2015.
The town of Pine Knoll Shores celebrates its 50th anniversary this year (2023). In commemoration, The Shoreline began a column in 2022 recounting some of the history of the area. Beginning in the February 2022 edition, several authors, including Barbara Milhaven, Phyllis Makuck, Martha Edwards, Walter Ellis Steele Jr., Michelle Powers, Deb Frisby, Jean Macheca and Susan Phillips, contribute small histories. The first is about a visit from Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian explorer, in 1524. In a letter to François I, then King of France, he described some of the native people he saw living along the coast (though it’s unknown whether they were in modern-day North Carolina or further north). The March 2022 edition follows up with a timeline of Pine Knoll Shores’ pre-history, from 1524-1954.
An illustration of a ship similar to the SS Pevensey, the remains of which lie near Pine Knoll Shores’ beach.
The December 2022 edition wraps up the pre-incorporation era with a careful mapping of how land was divided and sold along the coast as several of the beach towns we love today were formed. Now that we’re in the 50th anniversary year, we may get to learn even more about the beach town’s modern history—alongside articles from the present day.
Have you ever wondered what fire fighting was like in the 1930s and ’40s? Our latest batch of materials from the Greensboro History Museum offers a look into some of the gatherings of the North Carolina State Firemen’s Association through a set of booklets documenting their annual convention and tournament.
The convention rotated between several North Carolina cities, including Asheville, Winston-Salem, and New Bern, among others. The convention booklets contain lists of officers, transcripts of speeches from the leaders, and memorial pages dedicated to the fire fighters lost in the line of duty. They also include editions of the Association’s constitution and bylaws.
The tournament part of the gathering seems to include competitive drills that test fire fighters’ abilities. The last few pages of the most recent booklet (from 1942) list the records of some of the events from previous years, including the Horse Hose Wagon Contest (tied between Kinston and Morehead City in 1916 at 27 and 2/5 seconds), the Hand Reel Contest (won by Kannapolis in 1937 in 16 and 2/5 seconds), grab races and motor contests.
Thanks to the Western Regional Archives, we’ve added more issues of Black Mountain Newsfrom Black Mountain, N.C., to our North Carolina Newspapers collection. This title was originally suggested for digitization by the Swannanoa Valley Museum. This batch includes issues from 1977-78 and 1981-83 and features some of the local happenings from the area.
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.
