Thanks to our partners at Person County Museum of History, we are excited to announce a wealth of new materials are now available on DigitalNC. Included in this collection are numerous high school commencement programs and reunion booklets from High Plains School, Person County Training School, Person County High School, and Roxboro High School. Additionally, meeting minutes from the Person County Board of Education, economic development reports, and local business publications are also now available. Photographs from the early 20th century document special historical events like military memorial ceremonies for President Harding, and provide a glimpse of what everyday life looked like at the time, which included having oil delivered by a horse-drawn wagon.
Historical gems also include two Official Postmasters’ Account & Record Books from 1900 to 1903 and 1903 to 1906 that document local and US Postal Service history. The ledgers were kept by postmaster Nathaniel T. Williams, who ran the Push Post Office that served the unincorporated Push community located in Person County’s Flat River Township. The fourth-class post office was only operational from March 16, 1900, to August 15, 1908, after which the Push community sent and received their mail through the Roxboro Post Office, which had been servicing Person County residents since 1892.
In addition to the Post Office ledgers, one of the more unexpected histories found in this diverse collection of new materials are told by two additional ledgers that originate over a hundred miles away from Person County. The 1887 to 1889 and 1889 to 1890 record books kept by Reuben M. Hearne, an agent for the Old Dominion Steamship Company, illuminate a long past era in North Carolina history when steamboats and river travel were in their golden age. Each ledger contains meticulous logs chronicling the daily passengers and trips of the R. L. Myers, a river steamboat that traveled between the cities of Greenville (Pitt County, N.C.) and Washington (Beaufort County, N.C.). The R. L. Myers was just one of the many river steamers that would traverse the Tar River throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries as they transported goods or passengers between the coastal and inland regions of the state. The Tar River begins on the eastern edge of Person County, adding the age of river travel and steamboats as yet another rich history of Person County.
Alongside the historic ledgers, photographs, and publications found in this new batch of material from the Person County Museum of History, dozens of new issues of local and student newspapers are also now available on DigitalNC. Included issues are from the following newspapers:
- Local Newspapers
- The Roxboro Courier (Roxboro, N.C.) – 84 new issues from 1930 to 1969
- Student Newspapers
- Hurdle Mills High School Student Newspaper – 1 new issue from 1955
- Person County High School Student Newspaper – 1 new issue from 1969
- Roxboro High School Student Newspaper – 4 new issues from 1937 to 1964
- Person High School Student Newspaper – 6 issues from 1969 to 1970
More information about our partner, the Person County Museum of History, can be found here.
More materials, including yearbooks, photographs, maps, and additional newspaper issues can be found on the Person County Museum of History’s contributor page linked here.
Visitors can also browse two DigitalNC exhibits, African-American Newspapers in North Carolina and North Carolina African American High Schools, that feature materials from the Person County Museum of History.
