Thanks to our partners at the Chatham County Historical Association, DigitalNC is pleased to announce that several new issues of the North Carolina Anvil are now available online! The North Carolina Anvil was a local paper published in Durham during the late twentieth century. It was advertised as an “alternative” paper with a progressive, anti-war perspective.
Now, four new issues from 1970 and 1983 have been added to NC Digital’s collection. They join a collection of over three hundred already-digitized issues, and extend NC Digital’s coverage of the publication by three years. Interested in reading about North Carolina politics weekly from an angle “combative to the point that it was difficult to survive financially” (according to contributor Barry Jacobs)? You can find the complete collection of newspapers here. Interested in more Chatham County history? Learn more about the Chatham County Historical Association here.
There are many ways to educate people about fire safety. Greensboro Fire employed the famous duo Ember and flame to do the educate a variety of people about fire safety. Ember, the Dalmatian, was born July 04, 2000 and was only 8 weeks old when she began training to be a fire safety dog. Owner and trainer, Mitzi Rice aka Flame performed in more than 3,200 shows at schools, day cares and nursing homes. Ember and Flame have both passed on, but their impact on fire safety in and around Greensboro is not forgotten.
The information about Ember and Flame is from newspaper articles included in this most recent batch of materials. You can browse through the materials to learn more about Ember, Flame and the Greensboro Fire Department.
While Ember is the star of this article, the Greensboro Fire Fighters have a plethora of photographs, newspaper clippings and other information materials such as magazine issues and safety manuals for curious researchers at Digital NC.
Featured among these documents are the magazines published alongside both the Henredon Classic and the Planters Pat Bradley International golf tournaments. These golf tournaments were hosted annually at the Willow Creek Golf Club at High Point, and attracted world famous golfers from across the country. Each magazine featured notable competitors in each tournament, alongside columns by sports journalists analyzing the game of golf at large. Some issues even include profiles on the golfers and detailed maps of the courses they would play on. Of course, each magazine is a wonderful resource for advertisement from the eighties: local businesses and furniture manufacturers hold a key presence amongst the pages.
The latest batch also included large number of church bulletins from congregations within High Point. Churches included are Wesley Memorial Methodist, Oakview United Methodist, and Washington Street Methodist. Many of the church bulletins describe the construction and design of Wesley Memorial’s new chapel, allegedly one of the last gothic churches constructed in North America. One bulletin conducts a thorough art historical analysis of the symbolic decorations of the church, detailing the allusions carved into the walls of the church: a splendid resource for anyone interested in art history or planning to visit the historic site!
Four yearbooks from T. Wingate Andrews High School and High Point Central High School were also included in the batch, with all books covering the early 1970s at the schools.
If we’ve piqued your interest, you can investigate all of our brand new documents here. Interested in learning more about High Point history? View more documents on our website here, or visit High Point Museum’s website here.
New issues from thirteen newspaper titles have been added to DigitalNC, thanks to The North Carolina Collection at UNC Chapel Hill. These date from the late 19th century and fill in gaps in our digital newspaper collections. Issues from Our Home, The Daily Record, The Morning Herald, and The Western Herald are the first of these titles on the site.
Below is a list of titles, their cities of publication, and the years from which the issues date.
Henderson Gold Leaf (Henderson, N.C.) – May 25, 1899
The Wilmington Messenger (Wilmington, N.C.) – Nov. 18, 1898
Thanks to our generous community partner, Olivia Rainey Local History Library, and at the request of our partner Wake Forest Historical Museum, the book Connections: 100 Years of Wake Forest History by Carol W. Pelosi is now available to read for free on DigitalNC. You can flip through the pages of Connections and find local history of Wake Forest, NC ranging from 1910-2008. Information covers topics like farms and crops, the railroad, local businesses, holiday celebrations, festivals, and local government leaders.
To learn more about what our community partners, Olivia Rainey Local History Library are up to please visit their website.
To view other materials made available by the Olivia Rainey Local History Library visit their contributors page.
To view more North Carolina historical items visit the North Carolina Digital Heritage Centers website DigitalNC.
Digital NC is happy to announce another issue of The Elkin Tribune is digitized online, thanks to our partners at the Western Regional Archives.
This 1914 edition of the paper is a great resource to delve into the local history of Elkin, as it celebrates local businesses, elected officials, and the industrial history of the town – such as the construction of a new railroad and a wooden suspension bridge that once held the title for longest in the world at 210 feet!
To explore other available issues on The Elkin Times on our website, click here. And to explore other North Carolina newspapers, click here!
Thanks to our partners at Edgecombe County Memorial Library, we are pleased to announce DigitalNC now has over two hundred new records to explore! Pore over records from Tarboro’s history of shipping and manufacturing, read through decades of magazine club programs, or get inspired by dozens of new recipes! This new batch covers a truly dazzling array of subjects, from as far back as 1878 to as recent as 2022. They include correspondences, legal ledgers, and even uniforms! Whatever your historical interest, this collection likely has something for you.
Locals from or around Tarboro will be pleased to find a great quantity of photographs, publications, and records relating to downtown Tarboro’s historic structures. Historians have taken painstaking efforts over the years to preserve the history of this beautiful town, and the fruits of their labor are now easily seen. Many storefronts, churches, and civic buildings have carefully curated profiles, containing detailed photographs, preserved newspaper clippings, and written histories. Perhaps the most detailed of these profiles is Tarboro’s old town hall building, which served as a fixture of community politics before it was demolished in the late-twentieth century. The destruction of the building is detailed in full, even including detailed photographs of its demolition!
Readers interested in women’s history will be elated to discover over a century’s worth of documents related to the Tarboro Magazine Club, a collective of women dedicated to intellectual growth and community. The Magazine Club has graciously provided decades of correspondences between members, detailed lists of membership records, and magazine subscription lists. A vast number of programs are also included, which list the annual theme of the club alongside a schedule of lectures and talks given by members of the Magazine Club. Educational “learn-at-home” courses were also used by the club, and even include materials from UNC Chapel Hill!
Locals may also fondly remember DeBerry’s Colonial Dining Room, a traditional southern kitchen that served the community for years before its unfortunate closing. Fortunately, our collection now includes a host of photographs, postcards, and menus from the dining room. We even have detailed photographs of the famous uniforms worn by the waitresses! Perhaps most tantalizing of all is the inclusion of over one hundred recipes carefully recorded by Ruby DeBerry, the matriarch of the restaurant. The recipes are an absolute gem, reflecting mid-century southern cuisine in a new way. Miss a dish? Now you can recreate it at home!
Hungry for more? You can find this collection (and more) here. Want to know more about Tarboro? Contact our partners at Edgecombe Memorial Library at their website here. Want to test some recipes? Let us know how they turn out!
Browse through this weekly paper to see the happenings of Boone over half a century ago! Weekly marriage announcements, birth announcements, and obituaries are sure to make this a rich resource for any genealogist, especially due to text-searchable pages.
Plus, who doesn’t want to fantasize about grocery prices being this cheap again:
Founded in 1888, the Watauga Democrat still reports on local news today. Check out their website here! To explore other issues of the Watauga Democrat on Digital NC, click here. And to search through other North Carolina newspapers in our collection, click here.
We at NCDHC are excited to announce our latest batch of materials contributed by Braswell Memorial Library in Rocky Mount, N.C. This addition is mainly comprised of booklets from the Virginia Dare Book Club dating from 1934 to 1969. Booklets include lists of members and officers as well as scheduled events for the year. Many of these booklets are crafted into shapes including roses, butterflies, and the outline of North Carolina, showcasing members’ artistic talent and dedication to the club.
This collection also includes ten years of Bailey High School student newspapers from 1925-1935. Additionally, we have uploaded 1924-1929 commencement programs and a 1949 Future Farmers of America newsletter from Bailey High School, additional yearbooks for Spring Hope and Southern Nash High Schools, as well as a list of rules and regulations from the Wesley Privette Memorial Library in Bailey, N.C. See these records and all of our digitized materials from Braswell Memorial Library here.
We are excited to announce that the final issues of The Carolina Timesare now available on the DigitalNC website! Our site now hosts 3,811 total issues of the Durham-based African-American newspaper spanning from 1937 to 2020. With the publication of its final issue in 2020, The Carolina Times cemented its long legacy of promoting the interests of the Black community in Durham and across the nation. Thanks to funding from UNC Libraries’ IDEA grants over the past 3 years, we have been able to complete this work and expand access to this important piece of North Carolina history.
The paper shuttered after the death of its longtime publisher Kenneth Edmonds at the age of 66. Edmonds was the grandson of founder Louis Austin. Described as “the most important voice for freedom in Durham and in North Carolina” from the 1920s through the 1970s, Austin was a staunch advocate for Durham’s Black community and a powerful force behind local voter registration and school integration efforts. His descendants continued his work, as Edmonds and his mother Vivian “didn’t miss an edition” in the 1970s, even after a fire believed to be a result of arson destroyed the Carolina Times‘s building. Read more about Louis Austin, Kenneth Edmonds, and the family’s powerful legacy here.
In its final years, The Carolina Times continued to be a voice for social justice, especially through the fraught presidency of Donald Trump and the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. Below is one example of the Carolina Times’s reporting that focuses in on the experience of the Black Americans.
One exciting find in these final issues is a shoutout to none other than DigitalNC! As the below article suggests in what can only be described as a full circle moment, these uploads of The Carolina Times are invaluable to researchers, genealogists, and anyone interested in exploring local issues in Durham’s Black community.
While the closure of The Carolina Times is a loss for North Carolina and the larger Black press landscape, we are honored to make these issues available digitally and contribute to the paper’s preservation. To explore all available issues of The Carolina Times on our website, click here. For a look at other local North Carolina newspapers, click 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.
