Whenever we start a new digitization project in the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center, we like to work with materials that are in the best possible condition, in order to preserve the often fragile original items and to get the highest quality image we can. How, then, did we end up with this?
This is the only known surviving issue of The Weekly Reporter, a newspaper published in Rocky Mount in the 1880s. This issue was printed on this date in 1884. These are the best images we could get without having expensive conservation work done on the paper. Even with all of the fading, folding, torn pages, and stains from old attempts to tape it together, the images capture a fair amount of detail. If you look closely, you can make out parts of the social column, selections from jokes and stories reprinted from other pages, and some ads for companies and products ranging from the Rocky Mount Iron Works to “Mexican Mustang Liniment.”
This paper is in the Local History & Genealogy section of the Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.).
