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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.
Commemorating the migration of Quakers from Perquimans County to the Northwest Territories during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, individuals donned their best Quaker costumes and hopped on their horses or into their horse-drawn buggies and wagons to participate in the Friends to Freedom Wagon Train that traveled through Perquimans County from March 17th to 20th in 2011.
The first two days of the event were set aside for riding the planned 25 mile trail. They started their journey at the Newbold-White House campsite, making stops in Beech Springs, Belvidere, Bagley Swamp, and Winfall. In Belvidere, around 400 people came out to celebrate the train with vendors, live entertainment, wagon rides, food, and promotion of the area’s historical homes and buildings.
On the last leg of the journey, the Train took the Causeway and historic S bridge to parade through Hertford before finally coming back to the Newbold-White House. The final day of the event ended with breakfast, a church service, and a driving course competition at the Newbold-White House site.
Issues of The State’s Voice, published in Dunn, NC from 1933-1935, have been added to DigitalNC. Published by O. J. (Oscar J.) Peterson, this paper is much more of an editorial vehicle than many other papers at the time. The entire front page is devoted to his thoughts on one or more news items or topics of the day. His other interest was in writing informational essays about various parts of the state, like the one in this issue about Orange County and Hillsboro(ugh).
Over the years, Peterson managed a number of newspapers besides The State’s Voice including the Chatham Record, the Sampson Democrat, and the Lumberton Argus. Aligning with the Democratic platform of the time, Peterson expresses strong opinions in his paper about prohibition, public education, and economics. His editorials are so pointed that they are alternatively lauded or criticized in other papers.
In the final issue of the paper, Peterson says: “The publication of the State’s Voice has been an interesting experience, or experiment, in several respects.” The paper was intended to be read statewide, and was launched upon a “highly intellectual basis with a confessed non-public appeal.” He seems to attribute the demise of the paper in part to a lack of intellectuality amongst his subscribers, despite many of them being prominent in the state.
This paper was added on behalf of the Harnett County Public Library. You can view all of the materials contributed to DigitalNC from Harnett County Public Library on their contributor page.
The Smithfield Herald, established in 1882, was the oldest newspaper in Johnston County, offering an important insight into the county’s history. These semiweekly issues from January 1926 to April 1930 highlight local interests. Popular topics include weddings, deaths, church news, and local politics.
Also available to explore: creative writing! The Smithfield Herald published serialized fiction, poems, and short stories. Below is one example:
Learn more about the Johnston County Heritage Center and browse their extensive collections here. To look through all 3,096 issues of The Smithfield Herald available on DigitalNC, click here. And to search through other North Carolina newspapers, click here.
Over 1,700 issues of The Central Express and The Sanford Express are now available to view thanks to our partner Lee County Libraries and funding from the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). According to the Library of Congress, the paper was published under name The Central Express from ~1886 until 1891 when it was changed to The Sanford Express. This batch adds issues from a period of urbanization as well as agricultural and industrial expansion in Lee County from the late 19th to the early-to-mid 20th century.
From 1880 to 1919, Sanford saw agricultural and industrial expansion and community growth as a result of improved transportation. During this period, a large Black community began to take shape in Sanford with the establishment of business and residential district centered on Pearl Street. Individuals who did not work in the Pearl Street businesses in Sanford farmed; worked in the county’s brownstone quarries, sawmills, turpentine distilleries; or in building trades.
John and David Womack are specifically mentioned in the National Register of Historic Places application submitted in 1993 for the “Historic and Architectural Resources of Lee County, North Carolina, ca. 1800-1942,” as Black business operators. According to the application, the two were operators of a brickyard located near Sanford in the 1890s. Interestingly, John Womack is mentioned in the September 29, 1889 issue of The Central Express as being “a respectable colored man of this place,” that went to Charlotte to “become chief cook at the Buford House.” There appears to be no follow-up in The Sanford Express for John Womack’s return to Sanford in the 1890s to operate the brickyard.
Information about Sanford was taken from the NPS National Register of Historic Places application, seen 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.
