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More materials from Boy Scout Troop 835 and Girl Scout Troop 59 from Chapel Hill, N.C., are now available on our site thanks to the Chapel Hill Historical Society. This batch primarily includes photographs of the two troops’ trips during the 1970s.
One of the most iconic destinations is, of course, Philmont, which many former scouts would probably recognize. Located in New Mexico, the ranch has long been a testing ground for wilderness survival skills and troop bonding. Based on the camp’s photo archive, it doesn’t look like a whole lot has changed since these troops visited.
The Latta Family Account Ledger [1812-1821] details the accounts of residents in and around Orange County at the time and includes many well known early Durham families such as the Lattas, Rigsbees, Mangums, Holloways, and Leighs.
This batch of materials is openly available for research and covers a range of topics. Genealogists looking for family histories can benefit as well as folks interested in education, entrepreneurism or religion. To learn more about the area please visit the Durham County Library website.
A set of distinctive scrapbooks from Chowan University (née Chowan College) in Murfreesboro has just been added to our site. These scrapbooks span a long range of the school’s history beginning in the 1920s and then jump ahead to the 1980s.
A photo from Chowan College Scrapbook [1924-25]
The oldest scrapbook of the collection shows a bit of Chowan’s origin story as a women’s college. Though it’s not a formal yearbook, someone took the time to write in the names of students, their home towns, nicknames, birthdays, ambitions, and happy memories of them. They even pasted a little picture next to some of their entries. For instance, Jewel Askew was from Lewiston, N.C., her friends called her “Juke,” her birthday was December 5 (she was a Sagittarius), and her ambition was to have a “rose garden” (unclear why that’s in quotes or what the hidden meaning there might be). She must have had some good times with the scrapbook’s owner, since one of them wrote beside her entry, “Dear pal, don’t forget the ireeb-eus [?] of Feb. 14-16, 1925.”
Covers of the 1982-23 (left) and 1981-82 (right) Phi Theta Kappa scrapbooks
The more recent scrapbooks are somewhat more legible, and it’s clear that the Iota Delta Chapter of Phi Theta Kappa had a dedicated artist on their side. The 1982-1983 scrapbook, which was encased in wood covers (approx. 2′-3′), had an etching of Johannes Gutenberg, inventor of the printing press.
The Durham Section of the National Council of Negro Women, Inc. was chartered on December 1, 1965. Since that time, they have been leading, developing, and advocating for African American women, their families, and communities through collaborative efforts of advocacy, volunteerism, service, and leadership. Programs highlighted in this batch include the annual Bethune Recognition Luncheon, Harambee Breakfast, and Mother’s Day program.
“Harambee,” a Swahili term that originated in Kenya, means a community pulling and working together. But it also signifies determination, togetherness, love, and importance of knowing yourself according to member Dr. Louise J. Gooche. Although the breakfast program was created by Dr. Dorothy Irene Height earlier, it was not until 1994 that Louise Weeks introduced the Harambee Breakfast concept to the Durham Section. To this day, members of the Durham Section along with affiliated members gather together in beautiful African attire to enjoy food, hear stories, and recognize their members.
To learn more about the Durham Section of the National Council of Negro Women, Inc., please visit their contributor page or website.
To view more materials from the Durham Section of the National Council of Negro Women, Inc. please click here.
Wilson C. Daniel, c. 1863, who served in the 42nd Regiment (like Tom Dula).
Margaret Ann Wesson Tesh, 1868. An example of what white women might have looked like in the Reconstruction era.
We’ve got another batch of audio materials available thanks to our partner, Wilkes Community College. This set of 16 interviews and oral histories was originally recorded on reel-to-reel tapes, and they span from 1959 to 1979.
One of the recordings in this batch is a retelling of the legend of Tom Dula, popularized in 1959 by The Kingston Trio in their version of the folk song “Tom Dooley.” The general outline of the story is that Dula, upon returning home to Wilkes county after serving in the army of the Confederacy, had a relationship with at least two women, Laura (or Laurie) Foster and Ann Melton. It is suspected that this relationship triangle went bad and that Dula murdered Foster. He then attempted to flee into Tennessee. However, he was arrested and returned to North Carolina, where he was found guilty both by a jury in Iredell county and later by the North Carolina Supreme Court. He was sentenced to death in Statesville and hanged on May 1, 1868, which became the basis for the song.
The version of the story told in this recording (perhaps by Tom Ferguson, though the tape is unclear), also made in 1959, leans more into pastoral genre than other popular accounts. The speaker devotes a great deal of time to describing the home of Dula and his mother, which he says many in the area remember. He describes a lean-to on the side of the house (which he guesses was built around 1850) where Tom Dula stayed. He also describes the house as sitting among “a profusion of honeysuckle and roses.”
However, this account deserves a little bit of scrutiny, since it tends to romanticize and draw from the speaker’s imagination. The storyteller describes Dula as a musician who carried a violin around his neck and who only participated in the Civil War insofar as to entertain his fellow soldiers, though we know he was a member of the 42nd Regiment of the North Carolina Infantry. He also asserts that Dula was handsome and popular with the ladies, which, of course, makes it impossible that he was a “scoundrel” (Ferguson is not a Jane Austen fan, I take it).
Zebulon B. Vance c. 1875 (courtesy of the Library of Congress).
In addition to asserting Dula’s innocence, this version of the story describes Foster as an “innocent” girl with a talent for weaving, though author John Foster West asserts that Dula, Foster, and Melton were all infected with syphilis. Sadly, little is recorded about either Foster or Melton, and—perhaps tragically—Foster’s portrait now hangs beside Dula’s in the Tom Dooley Museum.
One final surprising detail about this story is that Dula was represented by none other than former North Carolina Governor and U.S. Senator Zebulon Baird Vance. Though biographer Clement Dowd mentions that Vance did not always prepare well for his cases, the storyteller in this version lauds Vance for coming to Dula’s rescue and attributes the two convictions to the “carpetbaggers” who made up the jury.
Southwestern Community College is based in Sylva, N.C., in Jackson county. Today, it advertises itself as the only community college with a scientific partnership with NASA. The materials in this batch also show its history of teaching technical skills, especially on this poster showing students modifying a car into a limousine. They also feature some of the academic accomplishments of students in the Phi Theta Kappa organization, a college honor society. The Alpha Eta Nu chapter at Southwestern had the opportunity to travel around the country for conferences, evidenced by the memorabilia in their 1985 scrapbook.
From “Pen and Ink,” 1991
The artistic and literary talents of past Southwestern students and faculty are also on display in the issues of the school’s literary magazine. One poem, written by Eugenia L. Johnson and apparently published in World Treasury of Great Poems (1980), is called “Me.” It begins: “Me, me, me, / Who am me / I know me.”
Amazingly, it is accompanied by this illustration of a person dabbing, a reminder that the dance move was popular long before Cam Newton (quarterback for the Carolina Panthers) did it in 2015.
Have you ever wondered what fire fighting was like in the 1930s and ’40s? Our latest batch of materials from the Greensboro History Museum offers a look into some of the gatherings of the North Carolina State Firemen’s Association through a set of booklets documenting their annual convention and tournament.
The convention rotated between several North Carolina cities, including Asheville, Winston-Salem, and New Bern, among others. The convention booklets contain lists of officers, transcripts of speeches from the leaders, and memorial pages dedicated to the fire fighters lost in the line of duty. They also include editions of the Association’s constitution and bylaws.
The tournament part of the gathering seems to include competitive drills that test fire fighters’ abilities. The last few pages of the most recent booklet (from 1942) list the records of some of the events from previous years, including the Horse Hose Wagon Contest (tied between Kinston and Morehead City in 1916 at 27 and 2/5 seconds), the Hand Reel Contest (won by Kannapolis in 1937 in 16 and 2/5 seconds), grab races and motor contests.
Written by Glenn H. Todd in 1965, Digital NC has made available The Immortal Nick Arringtonwith the help of our partner Braswell Memory Library. Born on December 25th, 1806, Nicholas Williams Arrington would be appointed to the office of Chief Deputy Sheriff of Nash County at the age of 21. He would inherit a vast amount of wealth in money, land, and property after the deaths of his father and brothers. The book written by Todd does a deep dive into the life of Arrington and his many adventures throughout the South before the Civil War in America.
To see more from Braswell Memorial Library, visit them here. To see other items in our memorabilia collection, visit us 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.
