More issues of the Harnett County News have been added to our site thanks to our partner, the Harnett County Public Library. This latest batch spans from 1921-1930 and 1938-1945, encompassing some of the happenings of the county in the early twentieth century.

One such happening is the unresolved story of Sheriff J.W. McArtan, who also served as the county tax collector in the early 1920s. McArtan ran several ads in the Harnett County News reminding people to pay their taxes on time. One short article in the March 3, 1921 edition warned that those who failed to pay would be put on the county’s “delinquent list.”

But what happened to that tax money? Apparently, it didn’t all make it to schools and roads. An article in the December 18. 1924 edition reads: “Former Sheriff and His Bondsmen to Contest Claim: J.W. McArtan and Bonding Company to Make Denial of Statement that He Is $54,000 Short.” It goes on to explain, “The News is informed that J.W. McArtan, former sheriff and tax collector of Harnett county, has employed counsel to defend him in the matter of settlement with the county for moneys alleged to be due to the county by the sheriff.” According to the rest of the article, McArtan’s attorney argued that several of the books keeping the tax records had been taken out of McArtan’s office, so it was impossible to tell “how much money has been collected on the tax books since they were taken away… that is, [the auditor] does not know to which account moneys turned over to him may be credited, nor does he know for what year they were due.”

$54,000 is certainly a lot of money to be missing, even by today’s standards. But to put things into perspective, converted to the value of today’s dollars, McArtan was on the hook for about $937,250.

What happened to former sheriff McArtan? His name brings up a lot of results in the Harnett County News and other nearby papers, so it’s up to you to look and find out.

You can browse all available issues of the Harnett County News here and explore our digital newspaper collection by location, type, and date. For more information and materials from the Harnett County Public Library, you can visit their partner page and their website.

More issue of The News Reporter from Whiteville, N.C. are now available thanks to our partner, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This batch adds issues from 1925-1927 to our North Carolina Newspapers collection and features photographs of some of the architectural marvels from the early 20th century.

These papers were processed from microfilm, meaning that photos from the earliest issues in 1912 are a little bit hard to see. This photo of the paper’s editor, Larry Gantt, was brightened for better visibility.

Despite the darkness of the photos, some of Chadbourn, N.C.’s notable landmarks are still recognizable in the paper. This photo of the R.E.L. Brown House, which still stands at 108 N. Howard Street in Chadbourn, shows the building’s distinctive columns. According to the North Carolina Architects & Builders biographical dictionary, the house was built in 1909. It was designed in the Colonial style by Joseph F. Leitner, an architect known in our state for his work in Wilmington, especially railroad buildings.

The popularity of railroads was still going strong more than 10 years later in this 1925 issue, when the paper ran a feature on Chicago’s Union Station called, “Latest Triumph in Railroading.” The article reads, “The station is without a doubt one of the finest and most efficiently designed railroad terminals in the world.” According to the station’s contemporary website, it cost $75 million and 10 years to build (that’s $1 billion in today’s money).

You can see more architecture from the early 1900s in the rest of the available issues of Whiteville’s The News Reporter or explore our North Carolina Newspapers collection by location, type of paper, and date. To see more materials from UNC Chapel Hill, you can visit their partner page and their libraries’ website.

More issues of The Coastland Times from Manteo, N.C. are now available in our Newspapers of North Carolina collection thanks to our partner, the Dare County Library. These issues span from September 1963 to August 1964 and touch on many regional events of the coast.

Within this span of issues is a column published by former U.S. Senator Samuel J. Ervin Jr. called “Senator Sam Ervin Says.” Ervin was from Morganton, N.C., and was known during his political career for opposing civil rights legislation. The Coastland Times was one of many N.C. papers that published Ervin’s column, including The Jones County Journal (Trenton, N.C.), The Yancy Record (Burnsville, N.C.), The New Bern Mirror (New Bern, N.C.), and The Transylvania Times (Brevard, N.C.).

Ervin’s column stands out today for how it differs from contemporary political propaganda. For one thing, it was published in local papers, which tend to focus on local and regional news. For example, one column from the September 13, 1963 issue runs next to a news brief headlined, “Sea Hags Will Meet,” referring to a local fishing club.

Another notable quality of Ervin’s column is that it is… relatively boring. Rather than employing inflammatory language or focusing on hot-button issues, Ervin tends to give technical overviews of the mechanisms of the Senate. In the column published on October 18, 1963, the Senator references a “controversial Foreign Aid Bill” and then writes, “Present prospects are that there may be no action taken by the Senate as a whole on the tax bill. There is a growing feeling that action on the tax measure should be postponed until after the President’s Budget message to Congress the first of the year.” Even though it is presumably written for a general audience, Ervin often chooses to use technical language and focus on bureaucratic details rather than argue for a bigger picture or stance.

You can read more of Ervin’s unexpected (by contemporary standards) columns and more of The Coastland Times in this latest batch of issues. You can also browse all of our digital newspapers in our North Carolina Newspapers collection. To see more materials from the Dare County Library, visit their partner page and their website.

What year would you guess Velveeta cheese was invented? The answer: 1918—making it 104 years old. It was bought by Kraft Foods Inc. in 1927, and that’s how we came to see this advertisement in the February 23, 1932 issue of The Ruralite from Sylva, N.C. This issue is one of the many from a batch of papers that was just uploaded to our site thanks to the Jackson County Public Library. This batch contains issues from 1926-1935—a great time period for newspaper advertising, apparently.

While Velveeta cheese (or, technically, “pasteurized prepared cheese product”) almost seems anachronistic for 1932, it isn’t the only familiar item advertised in the pages of The Ruralite. Since we’re in cold and flu season, you may be considering a trip to the drug store for a little medicine—and you might even buy the same item as your parents or grandparents.

It’s unclear whether today’s VapoRub is the same as 1935’s Va-tro-nol, but the cost of Vicks has certainly changed over the past 87 years. And medicine isn’t the only product that has gotten pricier; a list of goods from Sylva Supply Company, Inc. from 1932 lists “Kellog’s” corn flakes for $0.15/two boxes, Gerber’s “strained fruits and vegetables” for $0.11/can, and bath towels for $0.09 each.

There are also advertisements for Bayer aspirin and Camel cigarettes (of course). While it has changed media, perhaps advertising retains some of the characteristics it had in the 1930s.

You can see all of our digital issues of The Ruralite here or browse our North Carolina Newspapers collection by location, type, and date. To see more materials from the Jackson County Public Library, you can visit their partner page and their website.