The Eagle.

Thanks to funding from the State Library of North Carolina’s LSTA Grant and our newest partner, Cherryville Historical Museum, addition issues of The Eagle (Cherryville, N.C.) from 1942 to 1956 are now available on our website. The articles from this batch primarily focus on World War II, providing updates on local citizens in the military, battles, directives from the federal government, and advertisements for war fundraising efforts.

Look for the girl who sells war bonds and stamps for Christmas presents!

The Cherryville Historical Museum is located in Cherryville, North Carolina. Their mission is to preserve, protect, and exhibit the city’s history. The museum features several exhibits on the Cherryville’s history from the early 1800s to today. Some of the museum’s exhibits include toys made by Lloyd Stroup, the old jail, farm equipment, ladies wear, the potato house, and much more.

To learn more about the Cherryville Historical Museum, please visit their website.

To view all issues of The Eagle, please click here.

To view more newspapers from across North Carolina, please click here.

This week we have another 38 newspaper titles up on DigitalNC! In this batch, we have issues spanning 33 years from Oxford, N.C. paper Oxford Public Ledger. In addition to being the county seat for Granville County, Oxford is also home to the first female parachutist and inventor of the ripcord: Georgia “Tiny” Broadwick.

Georgia was born April 8, 1893 and weighed only three pounds at birth, earning her the nickname “Tiny.” She was married at age 12, had a child at 13, and was widowed before she was 15. In 1907, her life changed forever when she saw The Broadwicks and their Famous French Aeronauts perform aerial stunts at the North Carolina State Fair. She left home, joined the Broadwicks travelling show, and was legally adopted by the show owner, Charles Broadwick, making her “Tiny” Broadwick.

Georgia ‘Tiny’ Broadwick, 1911. Via Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

In an exhibition in Chicago the week of September 16, 1912, Broadwick became the first woman to parachute from a plane. In 1914, jumped into Lake Michigan, making her the first woman to parachute into a body of water. Also in 1914, she debuted the ripcord in a parachuting demonstration for the U.S. Army, performing the first planned free-fall jump from an airplane. By the end of her career she is said to have performed over 1,100 jumps.

Wilmington Star, January 10, 1914

Over the next year, we’ll be adding millions of newspaper images to DigitalNC. These images were originally digitized a number of years ago in a partnership with Newspapers.com. That project focused on scanning microfilmed papers published before 1923 held by the North Carolina Collection in Wilson Special Collections Library. While you can currently search all of those pre-1923 issues on Newspapers.com, over the next year we will also make them available in our newspaper database as well. This will allow you to search that content alongside the 2 million pages already on our site – all completely open access and free to use.

This week’s additions include:

• Toisnot Transcript (Toisnot, N.C.) – 1876
• Rocky Mount Progress (Rocky Mount, N.C.) – 1880
• The Warsaw Brief Mention (Warsaw, N.C.) – 1880
• The Albemarle Observer (Edenton, N.C.) – 1914-1915
• The Messenger (Fayetteville, N.C.) – 1887-1888
• The Times-Herald (Littleton, N.C.) – 1906-1909
• The Maxton Union (Maxton, N.C.) – 1889-1891
• Waynesville Courier (Waynesville, N.C.) – 1888-1911
• The Waynesville News (Waynesville, N.C.) – 1888
• Siler City Leader (Siler City, N.C.) – 1892
• The Troy Times (Troy, N.C.) – 1888
• The Daily News (Waynesville, N.C.) – 1886
• The Farmer’s Friend (Morganton, N.C.) – 1898
• The Norlina Headlight (Norlina, N.C.) – 1914-1924
• The Public Ledger (Oxford, N.C.) – 1889-1901
• Oxford Public Ledger (Oxford, N.C.) – 1901-1911
• Public Ledger and Oxford Banner (Oxford, N.C.) – 1912-1913
• Public Ledger (Oxford, N.C.) – 1913-1919
• Oxford Public Ledger (Oxford, N.C.) – 1919-1922
• The Tri-Weekly Examiner (Salisbury, N.C.) – 1869-1872
• The Weekly Examiner (Salisbury, N.C.) – 1871-1872
• The Salisbury Examiner (Salisbury, N.C.) – 1881-1883
• The Great Sunny South (Snow Hill, N.C.) – 1898
• The Stovall Courier (Stovall, N.C.) – 1898
• The People’s Paper (Warren Plains, N.C.) – 1895-1896
• Washington Weekly Progress (Washington, N.C.) – 1887-1888
• Washington Progress (Washington, N.C.) – 1888-1891
• The Roxboro Herald (Roxboro, N.C.) – 1881
• The Person County News (Roxboro, N.C.) – 1882-1883
• Person County Courier (Roxboro, N.C.) – 1893-1896
• The Courier (Roxboro, N.C.) – 1896-1910
• The Roxboro Courier (Roxboro, N.C.) – 1911-1917
• The Argonaut (Rocky Mount, N.C.) – 1894
• The Selma News (Selma, N.C.) – 1887
• The Messenger (Siler City, N.C.) – 1898-1900
• The Woman’s Right (Wadesboro, N.C.) – 1874
• The Sunny Home (Toisnot, N.C.) – 1881-1883
• The People’s Press (Salem, N.C.) – 1851-1892

If you want to see all of the newspapers we have available on DigitalNC, you can find them here. Thanks to UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries for permission to and support for adding all of this content as well as the content to come. We also thank the North Caroliniana Society for providing funding to support staff working on this project.

Thanks to funding from the State Library of North Carolina’s LSTA Grant and our partner, Halifax County Library System, new issues of The Roanoke News from 1923 to 1944 are now available on our website. This expands our current holding of the paper from 1878 to 1944. The paper, published weekly, primarily features articles on local, North Carolina news such as the completion of the Wright Memorial Bridge.

Wright Bridge Open to Public, April 1931.

Prior to 1931, individuals looking to visit North Carolina’s Outer Banks, or those wishing to visit Dare’s county seat in Manteo, would have had a rather long trip ahead of them. In 1921, the General Assembly passed a $50 million bond issue that was to be used for improving and paving roads that would connect county seats. In addition to these new roads, several concrete bridges were constructed that shortened the distance between places significantly. One of the bridges constructed under the bond was the Wright Memorial Bridge. In April of 1931, the Wright Memorial Bridge was finally opened to the public after 10 years of construction. The bridge spans the entire three mile width across Currituck Sound, connecting Point Harbor to the Outer Banks. The bridge still enjoys heavy usage almost 100 years later.

To learn more about the Halifax County Library System, please visit their website.

To view more newspapers from across North Carolina, please click here.

This week we have another 32 titles up on DigitalNC! Eleven of these papers are from Asheville, including a few with a focus on the organized labor movement.

When people think of North Carolina, unions aren’t typically the first thing that come to mind, which makes sense since the state has the second lowest union representation rate in the country at 2.6%, only beating South Carolina by about 1%. However, in the first half of the 20^th century, the labor movement was alive and well, that is until North Carolina officially became a Right-To-Work state in 1947, greatly limiting the power of unions in the state. In the 1950s, the unionization rate was 9% and it has been on the decline ever since.

The Workman, March 30, 1901

The Asheville Banner, July 30, 1931

Over the next year, we’ll be adding millions of newspaper images to DigitalNC. These images were originally digitized a number of years ago in a partnership with Newspapers.com. That project focused on scanning microfilmed papers published before 1923 held by the North Carolina Collection in Wilson Special Collections Library. While you can currently search all of those pre-1923 issues on Newspapers.com, over the next year we will also make them available in our newspaper database as well. This will allow you to search that content alongside the 2 million pages already on our site – all completely open access and free to use.

This week’s additions include:

1. The Elkin Tribune (Elkin, N.C.) – 1914-1920
2. The Progress (Enfield, N.C.) – 1922-1924
3. The North Carolina Times (Louisburg, N.C.) – 1848
4. The Monroe Enquirer (Monroe, N.C.) – 1909-1942
5. The Morganton Herald (Morganton, N.C.) – 1889-1890
6. Rocky Mount Mail (Rocky Mount, N.C.) – 1873-1876
7. Person County Courier (Roxboro, N.C.) – 1887-1889
8. Johnston Courier (Smithfield, N.C.) – 1878
9. Madison County Record (Marshall, N.C.) – 1902-1910
10. The French Broad News (Marshall, N.C.) – 1907-1911
11. Law’s Lash (Moravian Falls, N.C.) – 1911-1914
12. The Lash (Moravian Falls, N.C.) – 1914-1930
13. The Murphy Advance (Murphy, N.C.) – 1889
14. Murphy Bulletin (Murphy, N.C.) – 1886-1888
15. Union and Scottish Chief (Maxton, N.C.) – 1892-1893
16. Scottish Chief (Maxton, N.C.) – 1893-1894
17. Maxton Scottish Chief (Maxton, N.C.) – 1894-1898
18. Southern Illustrated Age (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1875
19. North Carolina Christian Advocate (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1856-1861
20. The Eclectic (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1892
21. The Special Informer (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1892
22. Anti-Saloon Advocate (Asheville, N.C.) – 1905
23. The Freeman (Asheville, N.C.) – 1933
24. Asheville Life (Asheville, N.C.) – 1930
25. Asheville Herald (Asheville, N.C.) – 1933
26. The Asheville Banner (Asheville, N.C.) – 1931
27. The Good Roads Bulletin (Asheville, N.C.) – 1900
28. The Workman (Asheville, N.C.) – 1901
29. Our Mountain Home (Asheville, N.C.) – 1906
30. The Church Advocate (Asheville, N.C.) – 1943
31. Mountain Home-Journal (Asheville, N.C.) – 1891
32. Western North Carolina Methodist (Asheville, N.C.) – 1891-1892

If you want to see all of the newspapers we have available on DigitalNC, you can find them here. Thanks to UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries for permission to and support for adding all of this content as well as the content to come. We also thank the North Caroliniana Society for providing funding to support staff working on this project.

Thanks to funding from the State Library of North Carolina’s LSTA Grant and our partner Yadkin County Public Library, 1,204 issues spanning from 1893 to 1941 of The Yadkin Ripple are now available for viewing on our website. Starting with its first issue in 1892, The Yadkin Ripple has been publishing for over 130 years. While the paper includes national news stories, its main focus is the Yadkin community with articles on local events, community member accomplishments, weddings and deaths of community members, and other interesting articles related to the area such as murder mysteries.

Murder or Suicide?, January 11, 1934.

In early January of 1934, The Yadkin Ripple published a story about Leoda “Oda” Mae Childress, a 20 year old woman living with foster parents, Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Tilley, near Benham, North Carolina. On Saturday, December 30, 1933, the family was set to make their usual trip to Elkin, but this time Oda was feeling unwell and decided to stay home. Later in the day, responding to a frantic call from Oda, neighbors Nathan Tharpe and Kelly Brown made their way to the Tilley house. Upon their arrival, they saw that Oda had been shot. Immediately Tharpe checked for signs of life and found that Oda’s heart was beating faintly. He called for a doctor, but by the time Dr. H. C. Salmons arrived Oda had passed away.

After arriving at the Tilley house, authorities noted that there were several signs that a struggle had taken place within the house—drawers were rifled through in multiple areas of the house, a window was smashed, a chair was overturned, and the phone receiver was dangling at the end of its cord. Later, after authorities had finished at the scene, Mrs. Tilley found a note in the pocket of the apron Oda was wearing that Saturday. The note, presumably written by Oda, mentions four men coming to the house who said she had 20 minutes to give them $500 or she would die. Instead of giving the intruders the money, she writes that she instead hides the money in cellar of the family’s tobacco barn. Oda ends the letter by asking Mrs. Tilley to tell her sweetheart Andrew Smoot (who was married to another woman) goodbye and that she wished to be buried in Benham. The note had no signature, but Mr. and Mrs. Tilley verified that it was in Oda’s handwriting and that they had found the cash where she said it would be.

Murdered Girl and Those Charged With Her Death, February 8, 1934.

Something felt off to many in the community including The Yadkin Ripple writer Alan Browning, Jr. who voiced his feeling of unease in an article, asking: Why did the intruders allow her to telephone for aid? Why did they allow her to write a lengthy note to Mrs. W. W. Tilley? If the rumor that the note was dictated after she was shot, how would the intruders know about the secret hiding spot for the money? Lastly, if the rumor is true that this was a suicide, why would Oda go through such elaborate preparations before ending her own life? The paper continues for several weeks after the publishing of the initial article to report any new developments in the case to the community.

To read the articles about the Childress case in their entirety and find out what really happened to Oda, begin here.

To learn more about the Yadkin County Public Library, please visit their website.

To view more newspapers from across North Carolina, please click here.