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Southwestern Community College Materials Showcase Student Talents

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A black-and-white illustration of a campus building against a mountain range.

A batch of materials from our new partner, Southwestern Community College, is now online. This collection includes photographs of the school when it was known as Southwestern Technical Institute, scrapbooks from campus organizations, blueprints for some of the school’s buildings, yearbooks, and issues of the student literary magazine.

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.

An illustration of a woman with curly hair dabbing.
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.

You can see all of the photos, scrapbooks, blueprints, and other Southwestern CC memorabilia here, and you can browse all of the yearbooks and literary magazines here. To learn more about Southwestern Community College, you can visit their partner page and their website.

Mill Photos, Yearbooks & Family Video Show Scenes of Life in Chatham County

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An adult tending to a large piece of machinery in a fabric mill.

Some photos from the Chatham County Historical Association include scenes of the Odell cotton mill that was formerly on the Haw River in Chatham County. Purchased by J.M. Odell in 1886, the mill was once at the heart of Bynum, N.C., and some of the mill’s satellite structures are still standing. The photos from this batch show the river pouring over a dam, as well as some of the machinery that was used to spin the cotton.

According to our partner, these photographs were taken in the 1950s by Arthur Hill London III, grandson of Arthur Hill London Sr. (1974-1969), who was the secretary and treasurer of the Odell Manufacturing Company at the time.

Several adults in dresses and hats talking to one another as they walk out of a house.
A still from the Siegrist family home movie, c. 1933.

These photos are only part of a batch from our partner, which also includes a set of yearbooks and an early home movie of the Siegrist family on a visit in Pittsboro around 1933. The movie shows some of the centennial celebration of the St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, scenes of a cemetery, and some footage of people gathering at a family member’s home.

One yearbook in this batch is the 1940 edition of The Seniorogue yearbook from Siler City High School. It is the second-oldest edition in our digital collection so far (after the 1939 edition), and it has a surprising amount of information about each student along with their picture, including the names of their parents.

You can see the photographs, The Seniorogue and the home video here, and the rest of the yearbooks can be found here. To see more materials from the Chatham County Historical Association, you can visit their partner page and their website. You can browse all of our North Carolina high school yearbooks by school and date in our North Carolina Yearbooks collection.

Burwell School Historic Site Materials Now Available on DigitalNC!

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Thanks to our newest partner, Burwell School Historic Site / Historic Hillsborough Commission, over 50 new records are now available on our website. These materials focus primarily on Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell; the Burwell family; and The Robert and Margaret Anna Burwell School. These materials, which include diaries and letters, provide a look into 19th century life and education in Hillsborough, North Carolina.

Black and white portrait of an older woman with curls. She is looking straight at the camera and is wearing a black top.

Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell

Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell, who went by Anna, is noted as an early pioneer for women’s education in North Carolina. She was born in and raised primarily by her maternal aunt, Susan Catherine Robertson Bott, in Virginia. Leading up to her arrival in the Old North State in the mid-1830s, Anna had received a good education, acquired teaching experience, married Presbyterian minister Robert Armistead Burwell, and had two children (Mary Susan Burwell and John Bott Burwell). While pregnant with their third child in 1835, Anna and her family moved to Hillsborough, North Carolina after her husband was called to be the minister of the Hillsborough Presbyterian Church.

Their first two years in Hillsborough, the Burwell family survived on Robert’s income as a minister. With an additional child and eventually more on the way, however, Anna decided to supplement her husband’s income by teaching after a local doctor asked her to undertake the education of his daughter. You can dig deeper into Anna’s life during this period by reading her digitized diaries on DigitalNC.

The Robert and Margaret Anna Burwell School and Continued Women’s Education

With Anna’s mind set on teaching, the Robert and Margaret Anna Burwell School (also referred to as the Burwell School) was opened in 1837. From its opening to its closure in 1857, Anna taught classes, handled student accounts, managed the school as well as her household. 

During its 20 years of operation over 200 young women from North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, New York, and Florida were taught in accordance with the school’s mission to “qualify young ladies for the cheerful discharge of the duties of subsequent life […] [and] to cultivate in every pupil a sense of her responsibility for time and for eternity.” To complete their mission, The Circular [1848-1851] shows that the students took classes such as Lessons on Astronomy, Watts on the Mind, Parsing Blank Verse, Philosophy of Natural History, and Botany. 

Though the Burwell School closed in 1857, the family was not finished contributing to women’s education in North Carolina. In fact the same year the Burwell School closed, the Burwells assumed leadership of the Charlotte Female Seminary (now Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina). Fourteen years after assuming leadership of the Charlotte Female Seminary, Anna passed away at the age of 61. Possibly due to his wife’s death, Robert and their son John left Charlotte, North Carolina and assumed ownership of a different girls’ school named Peace Institute (now William Peace University in Raleigh, North Carolina). 

Property History After the Burwell Family

Following their departure, the property was rented out by the Burwell family to various individuals until 1862. In November 1862, members of the Collins Family (from Somerset Place near Edenton, North Carolina) bought the property and lived there during the Civil War. Seven years later in 1869, the property was auctioned off as a result of the Collins Family being unable to afford to keep the home. The winning bid was placed by David Parks.

From 1869 to 1895, the home changed hands between the Parks brothers, David and Charles. It is believed that during this 26 year period designer Jules Kerner was hired to raise the first floor ceilings and add the Victorian embellishments found on the interior and exterior of the home.

In 1895, Charles Park sold the property to a local dentist named John Sanford Spurgeon and his wife Carrie Spurgeon. The couple brought in even more exciting updates during their lengthy ownership which included the addition of electricity and plumbing. The home stayed in the Spurgeon family for 70 years until the children of John and Carrie decided to sell it in 1965.

The property was obtained by the Historic Hillsborough Commission, a non-profit organization established by the North Carolina General Assembly, in 1965. After acquiring the site, the Commission began to restore the existing buildings including the Burwell home, brick classroom, and “necessary house.”

Officially opened to the public since 1977, the Burwell School Historic Site continues to follow its mission to “maintain and preserve the Burwell School Historic Site; to interpret the history of 19th century Hillsborough for the enrichment of the public; and to celebrate and promote the culture and heritage of Hillsborough and Orange County.”

 

To learn more about the Burwell School Historic Site, please visit the Burwell School Historic Site website.

To learn more about Burwell family history, please visit the Burwell School’s Our History page.

To view more materials from Hillsborough, North Carolina, please click here to view NCDHC’s Hillsborough related records.

Information from this post was gathered from the materials uploaded in this batch, the Burwell School Historic Site’s website, previous Burwell School Historic Site site coordinator Carrie Currie, and from Ashlie Brewer’s knowledge from her internship at the site in summer 2022.

Boy and Girl Scouts of America Photographs and Scrapbooks Now Available on DigitalNC

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Thanks to our partner, Chapel Hill Historical Society, a batch containing three scrapbooks and over 100 slides featuring trips and experiences of Chapel Hill Boy Scout Troop 835 and Girl Scout Troop 59 are now available on our website.

The scrapbook topics include Troop 835 in the news; the life of Scoutmaster, Paul B. Trembley; and Troop 835’s trip to Europe in 1968. Traveling numerous places from North Carolina to Canada, the slides in this batch show stunning and silly images of the troop’s trips and experiences taken from the late 1950s to early 1990s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                   

To view more materials from the Chapel Hill Historical Society, please visit the DigitalNC Chapel Hill Historical Society material page.

To learn more about the Chapel Hill Historical Society, please visit the Chapel Hill Historical Society website.

To learn more about the history of Troop 835, please visit the Troop 835 website.

Lena Martin Photo Collection along with Wide Variety of Items Added from Edgecombe County Memorial Library

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black and white photograph of a snowy downtown with adults sitting in a boat drawn by two horses
“A Boat Put in Service”https://lib.digitalnc.org/record/242258

Photos, genealogical research, and a scrapbook make up this latest batch from Edgecombe County Memorial Library. The images were scanned by the library’s staff, who requested they be added to DigitalNC.

Over 500 loose photos of Edgecombe County document people, town scenes, architecture, views of the Tar River, the tobacco industry, and notable events. There are some really compelling 19th century images, including a bird’s eye view of Tarboro, Princeville during one of the Tar River floods, and the burning of the Bryan House Hotel.

The Lena Martin Pennington photo collection is an additional 384 photos of Edgecombe County dating from the late 1800s-early 1900s. Almost all of the photos were annotated by Pennington with brief descriptions.

Here are some additional items in this batch:

You can view all of the items Edgecombe County Memorial Library has shared on DigitalNC through their contributor page.

Materials From NCCU Include Student Boycott Papers, Hillside High School Memorabilia, and More

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A group of three students gathered around their advisor, seated, all looking at a piece of paper.

Ex Umbra Editorial Conference [1965]

An exciting assortment of materials from our partner, North Carolina Central University, has just been added to our site! This batch includes several issues of the NCCU’s student newspaper The Campus Echo from 1970-2010, copies of the student literary magazine Ex Umbra, a university yearbook from 2011, men and women’s student handbooks, and some programs advertising the university and its departments. There are also several photographs of the Ex Umbra staff from the 1960s, as well as correspondence from the Student Government Association (SGA) boycott in 1970.

A white yearbook cover with a large, blue "72," a cartoon hornet, and the word "Hornet" written vertically.Along with materials about the university are materials from some of the historic Black high schools in Durham, especially Hillside High School. This batch has seven issues of the Hillside High School yearbook The Hornet (plus one yearbook from John R. Hawkins High School and two from the Lincoln Hospital School of Nursing). It also has several reunion programs and speeches, alumni directories, building and land records, a copy of the Hillside History Book, and two issues of the student newspaper The Hillside Chronicle. Though our partner did not have many issues of the Hillside High School student newspaper on file, we hope members of the community will be willing to contribute any issues they have saved to help make our digital collection more complete.

One especially exciting record from NCCU is the collection of boycott and student protest materials, which includes leaflets and a letter from a 1961 business boycott by the NAACP Youth Councils and College Chapters and correspondence from the 1970 SGA boycott. The 1961 boycott letter lists several recognizable stores that the NAACP YCCC successfully boycotted, and it makes an interesting mention of the role of race as an admission factor at Durham Academy. Separately, the demands of the SGA boycott (1970) are spelled out more clearly in this collection of correspondence between then-SGA President Phillip Henry and then-University President Albert Whiting. In the first document, students announce their intention to boycott classes until their “grievances and demands have been met to the satisfaction of the student body.” The organizers recommend the formation of a committee of students and faculty—where each have equal voting power—to implement solutions. For students looking for models of collective action and bargaining, these papers would be a good place to start.

A red and white cover with a majorette marching and a flag that reads, "Twenty-Seventh State Band Festival."In terms of high school materials, one unique item from this batch is the Twenty-Seventh State Band Festival Program from 1961. The festival welcomed bands to Fayetteville State Teachers College and recognized some of the band directors from around the state. Former and current band kids may appreciate the list of pieces approved for the 1962 festival as well as the (somewhat familiar) rating system below. 

You can see the full batch of photos, programs, and other documents here, and the full batch of yearbooks and literary magazines can be found here. You can also see all issues of the North Carolina Central University student newspaper here and all issues of the Hillside High School student newspaper here. To see all materials from NCCU, you can visit their partner page and their website.

Historic Edgecombe Architecture Showcased in Latest Batch From ECML

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A view of the front and side of a gray, two-story house

404 E. Park Avenue, 2001

A view of the front and side of a yellow, two-story house

404 E. Park Avenue, 2002

Some excellent photos of the historic homes of Tarboro have just been added to our site thanks to our partner the Edgecombe County Memorial Library. These photos document many of the buildings of downtown Tarboro—some of which are no longer standing—and include some information about the structure’s history. 

While many of the photos from the early 2000s are standard color prints, several of the older buildings, which have since been demolished, are preserved on color slides.

Black-and-white photo of a large wooden house

The Dennie Cox (?) House (1880s). Located on Highway 64, “half way to Rocky Mount,” before it was demolished.

A photo of a red brick school building set against a blue sky. A large tree takes up the left third of the image.

Bridgers School (demolished)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This batch also included another ledger from W. S. Clark’s store. This ledger, from 1913, joins five other ledgers already on our site from Clark’s Tarboro store. Additionally, we’ve uploaded six minute books from the Edgecombe Magazine Club ranging from 1911-1952, as well as the 1928 Maccripine yearbook from South Edgecombe High School.

You can see the full batch of photographs, minute books, and the store ledger here. To see more materials from Edgecombe County Memorial Library, visit their partner page and their website.

Three More Years of Wilson County Genealogical Society News Available

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A group of adults standing in a line

The 2022 WCGS Officers

Get excited, North Carolina genealogists—three more years of Wilson County Genealogical Society newsletters are now available on our site! These issues, ranging from 2020 to 2022, offer stories of family lineages and local histories along with WCGS news.

One article from the February 2022 newsletter helpfully explains the differences between older kinds of photographs: daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes. The authors, James and Margaret Bailey, explain the physical processes for developing each type, which include exposing some kind of metal or glass to light and then treating it with chemicals. One notable quality about these kinds of photographs is that they represent a mirror image of reality. The article includes this example of a person wearing a ring; in the original daguerreotypes, it looks like she is wearing in on her right hand, but in the digitally-flipped image, it’s clear that she is wearing it on her left hand (possibly indicating that she is married). 

A comparison of a photograph and its mirror image. In the photo is a Black adult in a white dress standing and looking at the camera.

For more interesting tidbits, you can see the full batch of newsletters here. You can also see all materials from the WCGS (including older newsletters) here. To learn more about WCGS, visit their partner page or their website.

Seaboard Coast Line Railroad Photographs Now Online from Braswell Memorial Library

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memorabilia photos

Our latest batch of materials from the Braswell Memorial Library includes a set of photographs showing the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad in the 1970s and 1980s.  The Will, List of Heirs, and a Decree of Sale of Lands associated with Samuel E. Westray who died on February 15th 1894 is also included. Other documents associated with the Rocky Mount (N.C.) area are scans of a Christmas Card from James Phillips Bunn along with an invitation to the Grand Celebration Ball.

There are photographs showcasing different aspects of the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad operation throughout the multiple locations across North Carolina. You can see derailed trains, individual parts of the trains, candid photographs of people near the railroad along with portraits of products being transported.

Picture of The Family Lines System train sitting still on the railroad track

The Family Lines System train          

You can view the Westray will, Bunn’s Christmas card, Grand Ball Celebration invitation and all Railroad photographs here. These materials are now apart of the NC Memory collection. To see more materials from from the Braswell Memorial Library you can visit their partner page.

 

Scrapbooks, Author Letters Celebrate History of Wayne County Public Library

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memorabilia photos scrapbooks

A postcard with a black-and-white, etched art of the Brooklyn Bridge. Below is the signature of Betty Smith.

From the 1950-1976 scrapbook

The back of the postcard with a message written in blue pen.

The reverse side of the postcard

Our latest batch of materials from the Wayne County Public Library includes some seriously cool scrapbooks that document almost a century of the library’s history. Ranging from 1910 to the 1990s, these seven scrapbooks contain detailed minutes, photographs, newspaper clippings, event paraphernalia and other ephemera. 

One of the most exciting sections is the collection of letters from North Carolina authors—who also happen to be mostly women—in the 1950-1976 scrapbook. Several writers seem to have been invited for readings and events at the library, and they wrote letters back to library staff about their experiences.

A newspaper photo of Betty Smith

From the 1950-1976 scrapbook

One of the most famous writers that visited was Betty Smith, who is probably best known for her novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (there are several materials about her already on DigitalNC, including this video interview). Although she was born in New York, Smith adopted Chapel Hill as her home town later in life and is still buried in the Chapel Hill Memorial Cemetery. Along with the card that she sent to library staff (pictured above), the scrapbook includes a newspaper clipping with an interview of Smith where she encourages Chapel Hill to resist the push for industry and to preserve its small-town character. 

“I hate to see commercialism,” she said. “They come in and tear up trees that took 200 years to grow, and pile them up and burn them to get rid of them. Then they stick out little trees⁠—with wire holding them up. Why couldn’t we have a shortage of bulldozers!”

A typed letter with the header of the Sanford Daily Herald

The second half of a letter from Doris Betts

Another well-known author included here is Doris Betts, who served as an English and creative writing professor at UNC Chapel Hill. Betts was born in Statesville, attended UNC Greensboro and eventually settled in Pittsboro. In her literary career, she produced six novels, three short story collections, a Guggenheim Fellowship, three Sir Walter Raleigh Awards and the N.C. Medal for Literature. Her archive is now part of the UNC Chapel Hill Southern Historical Collection at Wilson Library.

Other authors included in the 1950-1976 scrapbook include Inglis Fletcher, Bernice Kelly Harris, Mebane Holoman Burgwyn, Bernadette Hoyle, and Mertie Lee Powers.

You can see the full collection of scrapbooks here. To see more materials from the Wayne County Public Library, you can visit their partner page and their website. 

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