An excerpt from student Cora Belle Lee’s survey

New materials from Stanly County Museum are now up on DigitalNC. Included in this batch is a student survey from the 1920s, a 1944 ledger from the Albemarle Canteen, an attendance register from the Efird School, an Albemarle City Directory Supplement Edition from 1937, four issues of American and Efird Mills News & Views, and two scrapbooks.

The student survey from a girls boarding school in the 1920s gives a fascinating glimpse into the lives of the girls at the school, and includes information like each student’s favorite expression, flower, song, dish, and their “greatest desire”. Greatest desire responses ranged greatly from girl to girl and included, “to be a nurse”, “love and be loved”, “to see Europe”, “to get married”, “play a piano”, “go out west”, “to be a stage acteur”, “to be a missionary”, and “to go home (now)”. These questions also give us insight into the personalities of the individual girls. While some answered the questions dutifully, others had a bit of fun filling in their answers. In one survey, a girl responded that the color of her hair was white and that she was 8 ft tall. A few girls, in what must have been an inside joke, responded that their “first date with a boy” was in “1492”, with one girl responding “Aug. 9, 1922. (a real date)”. This fun notebook would be a good resource for investigating popular songs, slang, and dishes of the period, and it offers a wonderful personal connection to the girls at this school.

An excerpt from student Elva Jane Cathey’s survey

Candy recipes pasted directly onto the pages of the Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture, 1918

Another unique object in this batch is an extensive scrapbook comprised of various news clippings pasted over the pages of the Yearbook of the United States Department of Agriculture, 1918. It includes recipes in the first few pages, and then newspaper articles about births, marriages, and deaths in and around Albemarle.

To see the new materials click the links below:

• A & E News and Views
• Albemarle Canteen Ledger
• Albemarle City Directory Supplement
• Efird School Register
• Stanly County Scrapbook
• Student Survey
• Yearbook 1918 Scrapbook

To learn more about the Stanly County Museum, take a look at their partner page, or visit their website.

Francis B. Hays Collection Volume 122, Women’s Clubs I, page 115

The latest batch of scrapbooks from the Francis B. Hays Collection at the Granville County Public Library are now available on DigitalNC. Volumes 116 – 125 include subjects relating to women’s and men’s clubs in Oxford, politics in North Carolina, and weather.

Four of the scrapbooks highlight clubs in the Granville County area. Women’s Clubs I and Women’s Clubs II document the activities of intellectual and service organizations, such as literary societies and girl scouting groups. Men’s Club I and Men’s Club II highlight a variety of fraternal and service organizations, like the Shriners and Lions Clubs. There is also information and clippings about the Masons, which can be researched in context with other materials on DigitalNC, like those from the Grand Lodge of North Carolina. All of the newspaper clippings and print materials in these scrapbooks are full-text searchable and could be useful for genealogy researchers.

Francis B. Hays Collection Volume 124, Weather I, page 165

Francis B. Hays Collection, Volume 124, Weather I, page 175

Additionally, the scrapbooks concerning weather might also be of interest. These scrapbooks contain state and national newspaper clippings about extreme whether incidents, especially during the 1940’s and 1950’s. The images above feature two weather extremes from the triangle area– deep snow in downtown Durham and swimsuit weather in Raleigh in January! Check out Weather I and Weather II for more images and stories like these.

All the recent additions are linked below:

• Banks II
• Women’s Clubs I
• Women’s Clubs II
• Men’s Club I
• Men’s Club II
• Politics I
• Politics II
• Nocalore Vol. III
• Weather I
• Weather II

To learn more about Francis B. Hays and the scrapbooks he created, browse the exhibit page. For more information about Granville County Public Library, visit the contributor page or the website.

A 1961 newspaper headline from an article about foreign language classes being introduced to the school curriculum

A new batch of scrapbooks from the McDowell County Public Library are now available on DigitalNC. These scrapbooks include three volumes about McDowell County schools and two volumes about hospitals in McDowell county. Mary Margaret Greenlee (1892-1965), an educator and historian who began her career in McDowell County, began the compilation of these scrapbooks, which were then continued and completed by her family members.

The McDowell County School scrapbooks span 1960-1992, and include newspaper clippings about school facilities, administration, student activities and clubs, and more. The Hospitals in McDowell County scrapbooks span 1908-1992 and include clippings about hospital staff, expansions, programs and news.

A newspaper clipping showing school children performing a puppet show about car safety

To view these scrapbooks, click the links below:

• Hospitals in McDowell County Vol. 1
• Hospitals in McDowell County Vol. 2
• McDowell County Schools Vol. 6
• McDowell County Schools Vol. 7
• McDowell County Schools Vol. 8

To take a look at other materials from the McDowell County Public Library, including the first five volumes of McDowell County school scrapbooks, visit their partner page. You can also learn more about McDowell County Public Library at their website.

Johnson’s Supermarket, completed in 1956

Three new scrapbooks from the Braswell Memorial Library explore the history of Bailey, North Carolina. Two of these scrapbooks focus on improvement initiatives in Bailey in 1956, and from 1958-1959. The two scrapbooks document construction of new community buildings including a new fire house, a new Boy Scout hut, and a grocery store. Landscaping and other beautification projects are also documented with before and after shots of many improved areas around town. The scrapbooks also include promotional materials focused on getting “Baileyites” excited about these projects.

The third scrapbook includes news clippings about the Bailey Library from 1939-1975. The articles discuss new acquisitions, library open houses, book club meetings, and more.

To learn more about Braswell Memorial Library, visit their partner page, or take a look at their website.

Students helping to landscape Bailey High School

Part of a bulletin urging Baileyites to attend a meeting about the improvement campaign

Volumes 106 through 115 of the Francis B. Hays Collection of scrapbooks from Granville County Public Library are now up on DigitalNC. These scrapbooks add to the extensive collection of volumes compiled by Mr. Hays, an avid local historian from the Granville area. Each scrapbook contains a wealth of articles related to a specific subject, and many contain indexes and short histories hand penned by Mr. Hays. This batch of Scrapbooks focuses mainly on topics of commerce and transportation.

An airport advertisement from Volume 112

A newspaper article from Volume 113

A newspaper article from Volume 114

Volumes 106, 107, and 108 focus on Tobacco sale and production in North Carolina. Volumes 109 and 110 collect newspaper articles about automobiles. Volume 111 includes hand-written biographies and newspaper articles about important people in and around Oxford, North Carolina. Volume 112 focuses on airplanes, Volume 113 on railroads, and Volume 114 on the postal service. Volume 115 details the history of banking in Oxford.

For more Francis B. Hays scrapbooks, you can visit the DigitalNC page for the Francis B. Hays Collection or view our previous blog posts on the collection. You can also see more materials from the Granville County Public Library.

McDowell County Schools, Volume 2, page 219

Thanks to our partner, the McDowell County Public Library, 5 new scrapbooks are now available in the North Carolina Memory Collection!

The 5 scrapbooks feature newspaper clippings that, together, cover nearly a century of history of the McDowell County School System. They document the schools, students, administrators, and events in the area. Mary Margaret Greenlee (1892-1965) and her relatives complied the scrapbooks. Greenlee was a well-known educator and advocate of historical preservation in McDowell, Iredell, and Catawba counties.

These scrapbooks, which are full text searchable using Optical Character Recognition (OCR), are excellent resources for those interested in genealogical or historical research in McDowell County. They would be useful for studying change over time in the education system in North Carolina.

You can view each other digitized scrapbooks at the links below:

• McDowell County Schools Vol. 1
• McDowell County Schools Vol. 2
• McDowell County Schools Vol. 3
• McDowell County Schools Vol. 4
• McDowell County Schools Vol. 5

Visit the McDowell County Public Library’s contributor page or home page to learn more about their collections, events, and other services. To see more scrapbooks like these, browse the North Carolina Memory Collection.

McDowell County Schools Scrapbook, Volume 1, page 195

DigitalNC is happy to publish seven new additions to one of our staple exhibits, the Frances B. Hays Collection. Contributed by our partner, the Granville County Public Library, the Hays Collection documents the detailed history of Oxford, Granville County, and North Carolina on the whole.

Several interesting highlights from this batch include North Carolina Colleges and Schools, which documents various newspaper clippings and magazine articles about North Carolina’s institutions of higher learning. You will find articles about the organization and history of the University of North Carolina, Duke University, Peace College, Meredith College, and many more.

For any of our users who are familiar with this collection, the Oxford Newspapers and Oxford Newspapers II scrapbooks may be particularly interesting. As many know, all of the 150 Francis B. Hays scrapbooks are also most entirely composed of newspaper clippings; thus these items may be the most “meta” objects in the collection.

All of the scrapbooks highlight interesting news topics and popular information from the mid-twentieth century and are excellent resources for genealogists, historical researchers, or those simply interested in the history of our state.

You can view all of the newest additions to the exhibit below:

• Oxford Orphan Asylum II
• Oxford Colored Orphan Asylum
• North Carolina Colleges and Schools
• Oxford Newspapers
• Oxford Newspapers II
• Vital Statistics
• Vital Statistics II [Granville County N.C.]

To learn more about the Francis B. Hays Collection and to see the other 100+ scrapbooks, please visit the exhibit page. To learn more about the Granville County Public Library, please the contributor page or the home page.