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With the help of our partners at the North Carolina Society Daughters of 1812, we are excited to announce the addition of three new scrapbooks to DigitalNC. The North Carolina Society Daughters of 1812 was founded in 1912 and currently maintains five chapters throughout the state. These chapters include the Cherokee (Greensboro, N.C.) chapter, the Chief Junaluska (Hendersonville, N.C.) chapter, the Snap Dragon Chapter (Lumberton, N.C.), the Captain Johnston Blakeley Chapter (Raleigh, N.C.), and the Commissioner Charles Gause (Wilmington, N.C.) chapter.
These three latest scrapbooks document the activities, affiliations, awards, and members of chapters of the North Carolina Society Daughters of 1812. Included in these scrapbooks are newspaper clippings, photographs, chapter newsletters, digital correspondences, and more. With their addition to DigitalNC, they join the twelve other scrapbooks that document the history of North Carolina Society Daughters of 1812 as far back as 1940. These newest scrapbooks, ranging from 2019 to 2024, are the latest records of this well-documented organization. Be sure to take some time to browse through the North Carolina Society Daughters of 1812’s most recent scrapbooks, which are listed below!
Thanks to our partners at the Jonesboro Historical Society, over 70 new records are now available. These materials mostly pertain to the Jonesboro Garden Club, the oldest active garden club in Lee County. The members of this organization dedicated themselves to philanthropic and educational efforts to beautify the world around them and encourage others to follow their lead. Other notable items include photographs and negatives of scenes and people from Lee County and beyond.
Among the materials for the Garden Club are five scrapbooks, over twenty programs, and three notebooks containing meeting minutes. The scrapbooks are beautiful, filled with photos of colorful flower arrangements and newspaper clippings about their wildly successful events. The Garden Club was a pillar of community for Lee County; they advocated against littering, planted trees and flowers in beautification projects, and promoted conservation efforts. The members also opened their gardens to the public during home and garden tours, spreading joy through local flora.
The programs and meeting minutes highlight the numerous activities the Garden Club held, as well as providing a record of the club’s officers and attendance. Each program also included the club’s constitution and bylaws, along with a list of current members. These new programs range in dates from 1946 to 1998.
The photographs and negatives depict images from various locations throughout Lee County and beyond. There are images from classrooms, downtown Jonesboro, as well as various homes and farms. Also included are photos of local businesses and people.
To learn more about life in Jonesboro, North Carolina, browse materials from the Jonesboro Historical Society here.
With the help of our partners at Harnett County Public Library we are excited to announce that 7 yearbooks and over 75 years of records from the Tea and Topics Book Club are now available on DigitalNC. 3 new years of Footprints, Lillington High School’s annual yearbook, are included in this latest batch. Furthermore, with the addition of 4 years of the Sand Spur, Benhaven High School is now represented in DigitalNC’s vast yearbook collection. The Lillington Tea and Topics Book Club was founded by a group of twelve women in December of 1932, and has become a longstanding organization in the community since. Apart from organizing monthly meetings to discuss books, genres, and literary themes, the Tea and Topics Book Club has also played an important role in supporting local public libraries through regular book donations and fundraising efforts. Across five scrapbooks, the history of the Tea and Topics Book Club unfolds through handmade annual yearbooks, correspondence, photographs, bylaws, and newspaper clippings.
More information about our partner, Harnett County Public Library, can be found on their website here.
Materials from the Harnett County Public Library are featured in the Talbott McNeill Stewart Photograph Collection exhibit, which can be found here.
More materials, including yearbooks, newspapers, scrapbooks, and photographs can be found on Harnett County Public Library’s contributor page, which is linked here.
Thanks to our partner, the Sanford Woman’s Club, five new scrapbooks from the Sanford Junior Woman’s Club, ranging from 1950 to 1960, are now available to view on our website!
Cars on display at the second annual Sanford Automobile Show.
These editions highlight the club’s involvement within Lee County and greater North Carolina. By joining the club, each woman dedicated herself to bettering her community through acts of service. The Junior Woman’s Club hosted numerous fundraising and volunteer events throughout the year.
Members of the Sanford Junior Woman’s Club show cars.
One event the club hosted was an auto show. The first event took place in 1957, and the women collaborated with local dealerships to display several 1958 model cars, as well as sports and vintage cars. The event also included local girls from Central High School who sat in and displayed the vehicles. The girls wore outfits sponsored by local Sanford stores, an extra level of community collaboration. The event also featured raffles and exhibits from auto parts stores and tire companies, along with a surprise visit from Santa.
Santa chats with a member of the Sanford Junior Woman’s Club before the show.
The event was a roaring success, raising $553.90 with a profit of $385.49. The club decided to hold the event again the following year, this time featuring a parade of 1958 cars and a showcase for the new 1959 models. All the proceeds went to the North Carolina Children’s Home Society in Greensboro and the Caswell Training School in Kinston. The auto show became a staple event for the club, and they successfully held the event again the following year.
With the help of our partner, Wake Forest University, we are excited to announce five new scrapbooks have made their way to DigitalNC! Spanning from July 1951 to August 1959, these scrapbooks chronicle Wake Forest University’s move from Wake Forest to Winston-Salem. Wake Forest College, as it was known at the time, was founded in Wake Forest, a town northeast of Raleigh, in the early 19th century. After operating in the area for over a century, the college moved to Winston-Salem following a donation of land and funding from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation. The construction of Wake Forest College’s new home began in 1952 and the school officially moved to its new campus in Winston-Salem in 1956. The college assumed its current name, Wake Forest University, in 1967.
These five latest scrapbooks from Wake Forest University are filled with newspaper clippings related that cover student life, campus issues, and the move to Winston-Salem. Some highlights include pictures of campus construction and coverage of President Truman’s appearance at the groundbreaking ceremony for the new campus.
More information about our partner, Wake Forest University, can be found on their website here.
Information about Wake Forest University’s Z. Smith Reynolds Library can be found here. Z. Smith Reynolds Library’s Digital Collection can be viewed here.
More materials including yearbooks, magazines, catalogs, and 20 newspaper titles, can be found on Wake Forest University’s contributor page, which is linked here.
With the help of our partners at the Little Theatre of Winston-Salem we are excited to announce the addition of new materials related to the production and organizational history of the Little Theatre of Winston-Salem. Scrapbooks, posters, and minute books accompany production files in the latest batch of materials join the collection of playbills and posters already available on DigitalNC.
The 136 production files include contracts, playbills, photographs, stage planning, news clipping, and other records related to each production that Little Theatre of Winston-Salem put on during their annual performance season. Productions from the 1935-1936 inaugural season through the 1959-1960 season are illuminated in these organizational records that detail the logistics, practice, and resources that went into making each show a dazzling success.
Founder and first director, Dorothy Knox (pictured left), and long-serving director, Doris Pardington (pictured right)
As the Little Theatre of Winston-Salem celebrates its 90th production season and anniversary this year, these newly digitized records provide invaluable insight into not only the company history of the Little Theatre, but also the artistic history of the Winston-Salem community by the Little Theatre.
While their 90th production season has just wrapped up, the Little Theatre of Winston-Salem has already announced six major productions for their next performance season. Unfortunately the new season, which will open with Moriarty, doesn’t start until early September. Thankfully, we can keep ourselves occupied waiting for the next chapter of Little Theatre of Winston Salem’s next chapter by deep diving into the thousands of digital scans of materials from previous seasons.
More information about our partner, Little Theatre of Winston-Salem, can be found on their website here.
A detailed production history can also be found on the Little Theatre of Winston-Salem’s website, and is linked here.
More materials, more playbills and production posters can be found on Little Theatre of Winston-Salem’s contributor page, which is linked here.
Thanks to our amazing partners at Queens University of Charlotte, DigitalNC is pleased to announce that over a hundred new literary journals and six new beautiful books are now available online! Four of these new books are scrapbooks created for and by Queens students, while the other two are administrative records. They span from as early as 1919 to as late as 1978; combined, the collection offers a cohesive glimpse into campus life on Queens during the twentieth century. This fantastic collection will join Queens University’s burgeoning presence on DigitalNC, which has added almost three hundred records in the last year!
The highlight of this collection is by far a scrapbook titled “The Princess,” created in 1919. Scrapbooks created by students are often artistic and unconventional, pushing the conventional boundaries of the scrapbooking medium, and this volume is no exception. It chronicles Ms. Effie J. Wall’s first year at Queens, from her arrival at orientation to her departure for summer recess. Ms. Wall’s freshman experience is not unlike many modern college students’ — she quickly forms a tightly knit group of friends, finds a “beau,” makes fun of her professors, and dives in to extracurricular activities. Her handwriting fills the margins of each page, providing color commentary on clippings of newspapers and official campus publications. She also includes a variety of unconventional material in her book, including (but not limited to) peanut bags, candy wrappers, locks of her friends’ hair, and scorecards for bridge. The inclusion of these unusual materials hints at that wide-eyed fascination with the wider world many college students experience after moving away from home, even centuries ago. The Princess is an amazing example of humans remaining humans throughout the years (or, rather, teenagers being teenagers!).
Another excellent example of student creativity can be found in the wealth of literary journals included in this collection. Published under a variety of titles during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, these journals embody Queens student’s skills in written and visual art. Each issue contains poems, illustrations, and creative nonfiction created by and for Queens’ faculty and students. The issues span as far back as 1917 to as recently as 2024, meaning DigitalNC now has over a century of published material available online!
We are also pleased to announce that a brand new collection of the Queens University student newspaper has been digitized from microfilm for the very first time! The new issues will join an impressive collection of nearly 500 issues already online, ranging from 1920 to 2005. The papers chronicle campus life at Queens from 1961 to 1985, a period where Queens began accepting male students to its hallowed halls for the very first time. You can find the new issues of the Queens University student newspaper online at DigitalNC here.
You can find The Princess, along with the other scrapbooks and administrative records, online now at DigitalNC here. You can also find the literary journals online now at DigitalNC here. Interested in learning more about Queens University of Charlotte? Try exploring their records online at DigitalNC here, or visiting their website online here. Thanks again to our fantastic partners at Queens University for making this collection, and many other amazing pieces of history, available online at DigitalNC.
With the help of our partners at McDowell Arts Council Association, we are excited to announce the addition of new materials related to the culture and arts of McDowell County, North Carolina. McDowell Arts Council Association, also known as MACA, has been a pillar of the community since 1972, and its materials document over half a century of artistic involvement and expression in the county.
Foothills Community Theatre, the performing arts center in Marion, North Carolina that was started alongside MACA in 1972, is the subject of three scrapbooks and two photograph albums from this batch of materials. DigitalNC visitors can browse the Foothills Scrapbooks for ephemera, publications, and press related to Foothills Community Theatre productions from 1980 to 1996. Visitors can also find photographs from several later productions in the two photograph albums Voices [1993]. Alongside these materials, another scrapbook includes general McDowell Arts Council Association activities from 1987 to 1996.
This latest batch is completed with three booklets that chronicle a more recent endeavor of the McDowell Arts Council Association called the McDowell Quilt Trail. Started in 2009 with inspiration from the Quilt Trail of Western North Carolina, the McDowell Quilt Trail project helped bring hundreds of painted wooden quilt squares to the barns, houses, garages, and public buildings of McDowell County. The project was retired in 2018 when over the course of nearly 10 years, 230 quilt squares had been successfully built, painted, and displayed across the county.
More information about our partner, McDowell Arts Council Association, can be found on their website here.
More materials, including scrapbooks, magazines, poetry and literary booklets, and photographs can be found on McDowell Arts Council Association’s contributor page, which is linked here.
Thanks to our amazing partners at Southwestern Community College, DigitalNC is pleased to announce that three new scrapbooks and a beautiful binder of photographs are now available online in our new Swain County Cooperative Extension exhibit! The new books and images represent the rich history of community involvement in and around Swain County, especially the efforts of the county’s 4-H and agricultural extension clubs. They include materials that date as far back as 1955, up until as recently as 2009.
4-H and other agricultural extension clubs were established in the mid-nineteenth century to foster community engagement with local agricultural resources and practices. The scrapbooks record these programs in actions, including community cattle judging contests, workshops on canning and babysitting, and school field trips to farms and forests. Clubs were often supported by both state and federal agencies, and Swain County’s programs were so successful they even gained a visit from Governor Dan Moore! A full range of agricultural programs are represented in the photos and clippings found in this collection, and they’re an excellent representation of the variety of industries that can be found in North Carolina, from tobacco and corn fields to vintage photos of cattle, swine, and sheep.
One of the best-represented 4-H programs found in this collection is Camp Swannanoa, a local summer camp that hosted Swain County’s students during school-time breaks. Camp Swannanoa is the platonic ideal of a classic summer camp in the woods of North Carolina, complete with old-school log cabins, campfire songs, and an archery range. One scrapbook is completely devoted to Swannanoa, recording the course of a typical summer from the arrival of counselors to the departure of campers on the last day. The scrapbook also records events organized in the off-season, such as workshops on gardening and community-beautification projects. It’s an excellent representation of 4-H clubs’ impacts on local communities, and the other scrapbooks are full of similar stories.
You can find the new photo album and scrapbooks online now at DigitalNC here. Thanks again to our fantastic partners at Southwestern Community College. You can find more records relating to the Swain County at DigitalNC’s new exhibit, the Swain County Cooperative Extension, here. Interested in finding more records relating to 4-H clubs? Try searching DigitalNC’s image collections here, or our general holdings of 4-H history here.
Thanks to our amazing partners at the North Carolina Society Daughters of 1812, DigitalNC is proud to announce that six new scrapbooks are now available online! These stunning scrapbooks beautifully chronicle six years of society activities, including historic reenactments, fundraising banquets, and historic preservation initiatives. Each chapter across North Carolina is represented in each scrapbook, and every issue is a stunning representation of the history that can be found across the state.
Each chapter’s title page is colorful and unique, like this Charles Gause Chapter page from the 2015 scrapbook.
The scrapbooks encompass nearly a decade of recent activities conducted by the state chapter. They join six other scrapbooks currently available on DigitalNC, effectively doubling the society’s digital documentary record. The new scrapbooks cover the following years:
Each book includes content created by chapters located across the state, from Hendersonville to Wilmington. Each state chapter has their own unique method of recording their history, making each year’s scrapbook a colorful collection of contributions. For instance, the Commissioner Charles Gause Chapter of Wilmington consistently includes records of their awards to JROTC units in local high schools, while the Snap Dragon Chapter of Lumberton decorates their pages with paper-craft ships and naval motifs. Certificates awarded to the North Carolina Society also fill the pages of these scrapbooks, recognizing the society’s commitment to supporting students, veterans, and historic preservation.
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.
![A page from North Carolina Society Daughters of 1812 Scrapbook [2019-2020] that includes the front page of The Wasp newsletter pasted onto an orange tie-dye background.](https://www.digitalnc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Screenshot-2025-08-04-105654.png)
![The front page of the North Carolina Society Daughters of 1812 State Council meeting booklet from North Carolina Society Daughters of 1812 Scrapbook [2021-2024]. The grey booklet includes the organization's logo which is an anchor decorated with a red, white, and blue star along with a red and white ribbon.](https://www.digitalnc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Screenshot-2025-08-04-111149.png)
![Production poster for Cats [2005-2006] featuring the headshots of the cast next to pictures of them in character.](https://www.digitalnc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Screenshot-2025-06-16-144329.png)
![Locks of hair in various colors. Written at the top of the page in cursive is: Just to re-member the exact shade. Next to the hair locks are names, from left to right, top to bottom the names written are: Annie, Marie, Sallie, Sarah, Mary, Mary Allan, and Margurite [?].](https://www.digitalnc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/default-2.jpg)
