Thanks to funding from the State Library of North Carolina’s LSTA Grant and our partner, Johnston County Heritage Center, over five hundred issues from 1911 to 1925 of The Smithfield Herald are now available on our website. These issues expand DigitalNC’s previously digitized issues from 1901 all the way to 1925.
The paper was first published weekly in Smithfield, North Carolina in 1882 under the name The Weekly Herald. In the late 1880s, the paper was renamed a second and final time to The Smithfield Herald. Articles in the paper focus on local as well as national news. Over one hundred years later, The Smithfield Herald continues to be published in Smithfield, North Carolina.
A special Sunday edition of the paper was printed when William B. Cole, a rich mill owner in Rockingham, North Carolina, was acquitted of the charge of murder. According to the paper, Cole was on trial for the murder of his daughter’s lover and former serviceman—William B. Ormond. The paper is unclear about what motive Cole had to murder Ormond.
After several hours of deliberation and pressuring one of their fellow jurors, the jury concluded that the mill owner was not guilty of the murder of Ormond. The writer’s mention of the defendant as a wealthy man in the article points to the suspicion that he may have been acquitted thanks to his money.
Although found not guilty, the judge would not release the defendant until he proved that he was sane. A day after the verdict was read, Cole attended a hearing in Wilkesboro to determine whether or not he should be sent to the State Hospital for the Insane in Raleigh. It is not mentioned in the two articles about this story if Cole was released or sent to the hospital.
To read more about the William B. Cole case, click here and here.
To learn more about the Johnston County Heritage Center, please visit their website.
To view more newspapers from across North Carolina, please click here.
Back in December, we announced our annual call for microfilmed newspaper digitization. We asked institutions throughout North Carolina to nominate papers they’d like to see added to DigitalNC. As it is every year, it was an incredibly tough choice – we are typically able to choose between 40-60 reels out of over 500+ nominated. This year we’ve chosen the following titles and years.
| Title |
Years |
Nominating Institution |
| The Elkin Tribune (Elkin, N.C.) |
1942-1949 |
Elkin Public Library |
| The Enterprise (Williamston, N.C.) |
1943-1954 |
Martin Community College and Martin Memorial Public Library |
| Gates County Index (Gatesville, N.C.) |
1942-1956 |
Gates County Public Library |
| Green Line (Asheville, N.C.) |
1987-1994 |
Buncombe County Public Libraries |
| The News of Orange County (Hillsborough, N.C.) |
1944-1964 |
Orange County Public Library |
| The Pamlico News (Bayboro, N.C.) |
1976-1987 |
New Bern-Craven County Public Library |
| The Pilot (Southern Pines, N.C.) |
1965-1968 |
Southern Pines Public Library |
| The Smithfield Herald (Smithfield, N.C.) |
1911-1925 |
Johnston County Heritage Center |
| The Wallace Enterprise (Wallace, N.C.) |
1931-1955 |
Thelma Dingus Bryant Library |
| Winston-Salem Chronicle (Charlotte, N.C.) |
2017-2018 |
Forsyth County Public Library |
For our selection criteria, we prioritize newspapers that document underrepresented communities, new titles, papers that come from a county that currently has little representation on DigitalNC, and papers nominated by new partners. After selection, we ask the partners to secure permission for digitization and, if that’s successful, they make it into the final list above.
We hope to have these titles coming online in the first half of 2021. If your title didn’t make it this year don’t despair! We welcome repeat submissions, and plan on sending out another call in Fall 2021.
Program from the 1942 Smithfield High School Junior-Senior banquet
DigitalNC has added additional photos and ephemera from Smithfield High School, located in Smithfield, Johnston County, North Carolina. This most recent batch documents SHS Junior-Senior banquets, music and drama, and graduates/graduations, and also includes issues of the student newspaper, the Smithfield High Times. This addition was made possible thanks our partners at the Smithfield High School Alumni Association.
Thirty-five issues of the High Times have been added, spanning the early 1950s to the late 1960s. Starting in 1937 and lasting until 1969, High Times was published semi-regularly by students at Smithfield High School As a high school newspaper, topics ran the gamut, from informational to entertaining. Examples of material covered include school clubs, contests, career days, scholarships, field trips, sports, honor roll announcements, gossip, and fashion. While the newspaper wasn’t published on a set schedule, issues often came out around Thanksgiving, winter break, and at the end of the school year. Each issue features a hand drawn cover page while various smaller drawings add homemade detail to columns within the newspaper. There is a marked switch to a more professional layout in 1968, only spanning two issues.
Among the photos and ephemera added in this most recent batch you’ll find photographs of graduating classes, along with ephemera about graduates dating from 1909-1969. Snapshots and programs from Junior-Senior banquets are another highlight, with handmade menus based on each banquet’s theme. Finally, there are collections of programs, newspaper clippings, and photos related to music and drama activities at the school.
To view all issues of the Smithfield High Times by cover page, click here. You can view everything the Alumni Association has shared on DigitalNC on their contributor page. You can view the items by subject on their exhibit page. To learn more about the Smithfield High School Alumni Association, you can visit their homepage here.
Cover of the 1962 Johnston County Training School yearbook.
Beginning in the early 1900s, North Carolina citizens segregated their schools. African American and Native American children were forced to attend separate schools from their white counterparts. Sometimes within the students’ own towns, sometimes a county away, these segregated schools often operated with fewer resources and poor infrastructure.
We help cultural heritage institutions scan high school yearbooks. To date we’ve added over 8,200 to DigitalNC. Less than 5% come from African American high schools*. There are a lot of reasons for this – sometimes African American schools couldn’t afford to create a yearbook, or few members of their student population could purchase one. There were a lot fewer African American schools compared to white schools, too. Many cultural heritage institutions, due to implicit or explicit bias, haven’t collected them over the years. In addition, families may be less likely to give them up to a predominantly white collecting institution. We’re always so glad to see them come through our doors, with an awareness of the fact that they represent vibrant communities flourishing within a repressive social structure.
To highlight the rarity of these yearbooks and to possibly help locate more, we’ve created a list of the names and locations of all of the public African American high schools compiled from the North Carolina Educational Directory around the time that the schools were desegregated.
You can see from the image above that the list includes
- the school’s name along with any variants we’ve uncovered,
- city,
- county,
- whether or not we have any yearbooks on DigitalNC.org,
- a link to a known alumni association’s website, and
- links to the Educational Directories where the school’s name was located.
The Educational Directory series was compiled and produced by the State Department of Public Instruction. These directories are incredibly useful for researching public school history. They list the names of schools along with locations and statistics. In the years leading up to 1964, “negro” schools were listed separately from white schools for each county, as shown in the excerpt below.
This excerpt comes from page 95 of the 1963 North Carolina Educational Directory. It notes the White and “Negro” schools of Rocky Mount, NC.
Beginning in the 1964-1965 Educational Directory – a full 10 years after the federal abolition of school segregation – schools were no longer designated as “negro” or white. Full integration in North Carolina took even longer, only completing in 1971.
In addition to the list of schools, we’ve created a North Carolina African American High Schools exhibit page through which you can more easily browse or search the African American high school yearbooks currently available on DigitalNC.
We hope that both the exhibit page and the list are useful for those who may not know the name of the African American high school that used to exist in their county or community, or who may be looking for yearbooks from a particular school or area of the state. Both will be updated if our partners are able to locate more yearbooks for digitization. If you have questions, check our Yearbook Digitization page for more information or contact us.
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* During segregation Native Americans were a significantly smaller portion of the population compared to African Americans. Native American children were not allowed to attend white schools. In a few cases they had their own schools; in many they were sent to the “negro” schools. We use the term “African American high schools” for brevity, acknowledging that these institutions educated students with many identities.
Program from the High School Football State Finals, Appalachian vs. Smithfield, December 1959
The Smithfield High School Alumni Association, a new partner, recently brought over a large collection of photographs, newspaper clippings, and school ephemera for digitization here at the Digital Heritage Center. Sports as well as musical and theatrical performances feature prominently in this batch. There are formal portraits alongside candid snapshots taken of students over the years. Much of the content dates from the 1940s – 1960s before the high schools in Johnston County were consolidated and integrated.
One of the many pages of snapshots of Smithfield High School students.
A history of Smithfield published in 1977 by the Smithfield Herald for the town’s bicentennial was also scanned as part of this batch. It provides a detailed history of the town, as well as great historic photographs of the town.
You can view all of the materials we’ve digitized for the Smithfield High School Alumni Association on their contributor page. If you’re an SHS fan or alum, you may also be interested in the SHS yearbooks that the Johnston County Heritage Center has shared through our site.
This holiday season join us here on the blog for the 12 Days of NCDHC. We’ll be posting short entries that reveal something you may not know about us. You can view all of the posts together by clicking on the 12daysofncdhc tag. And, as always, chat with us if you have questions or want to work with us on something new. Happy Holidays!
Day 3: We’ll Come to You
In 2017 we introduced a new initiative – DigitalNC on the Road! in which we pack up our scanners and laptops and travel to partners to scan items in their collections. One of our favorite parts of being part of the NCDHC is getting to see our partners’ institutions (and get in a little NC sightseeing and tasting too!)
NCDHC staff scanning at Johnston County Heritage Center
Several partners so far have taken us up on the offer including City or Raleigh Museum, Johnston County Heritage Center, Winston Salem African American Archive, Gaston County Public Library and Graham County Public Library.
The length of time we will come for is flexible. Some partners we just visit for a day, other partners we come to for two or three days to really work through a collection. The process to visit starts at least a month beforehand where we meet with you via the phone to discuss what collections we can work on, how many materials we can get through, and discuss initial metadata needs. As far as resources needed once we arrive – a few tables and chairs and outlets near those tables is really it. We have been in community rooms, board rooms, and research rooms for our scanning setups! We welcome the public to view us and ask us any questions they might have. Our blog post announcing the initiative gives a good overview of how the process works. We have done photograph collections, news clippings, student history projects, and slides as part of our on site visits. Starting in January however we’ll have new scanners that will also allow us to easily do bound materials, including yearbooks.
Lisa chatting with board members from the Winston Salem African American Archive
We are also happy to come visit and just talk through the collections you have and what might be candidates for digitization back at NCDHC in Wilson Library, and if you’re ready, take some of those materials back for us.
If you’re interested in talking with us to set up an on site visit let us know. We’re always up for a road trip across North Carolina!
Check back on Wednesday as we reveal Day 4 of the 12 Days of NCDHC!
Aerial Photograph, 1983
Thanks to our partners at Johnston Community College, DigitalNC is proud to make more photographs, a scrapbook and a 1988 class schedule available online. This batch follows a previous set of about 750 photographs from the college, and continues along themes of education, community, and the campuses in Smithfield and Four Oaks.
Some of the most notable photos are of campus personalities, including Dr. A. Curtis Phillips, President Donald Reichard, other faculty and staff, and several that focus on President John Tart as he was about to retire.
John Tart, his wife Marjorie Tart, and their grandchildren pose by a series of cakes meant to look like the Johnston Community College at President Tart’s retirement party, 1998
The batch also includes the first scrapbook of news clippings produced by Johnston Community College. This book, filled with clippings from 1969 to 1972, is the first of many scrapbooks assembled by College faculty and staff. This book documents the origins and early days of the school, which opened as Johnston County Technical Institute in Fall 1969.
To see all of the photographs on DigitalNC from Johnston Community College, click here. DigitalNC also hosts several yearbooks from Johnston Community College from this time period–click here to view them. To learn more about Johnston Community College, visit their partner page here or their website here.
More issues of the The Smithfield Herald from 1901-1911 are now available on DigitalNC courtesy of our partner, Johnston County Heritage Center. These issues join previously digitized issues from 1917-1918. The Smithfield Herald was established in 1882 and is still published in Smithfield, North Carolina, and distributed throughout Johnston County.
These early issues of The Smithfield Herald focused on local news from Smithfield and surrounding towns in Johnston County, as well as state and national news. The paper covered topics such as politics, the economy, municipal issues, and local events.
Not only did The Smithfield Herald include local and and national news stories, it also published popular novels in weekly installations. For example, the novel Beverly of Graustark by George Barr McCutcheon was carried for several months starting on June 29, 1906. Beverly of Graustark belonged McCutcheon’s series of romantic adventures set in the fictional Eastern European country of Graustark, and was made into a film in 1926 that featured an early technicolor sequence.
To see more materials from our partner, Johnston County Heritage Center, take a look at their DigitalNC partner page, or visit their website.
138 issues of the Smithfield Herald have been newly added to DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner, the Johnston County Heritage Center. These are the first issues of the Smithfield Herald digitized on DigitalNC, covering January 1917 to April 1918. Established in 1882, the Herald was at one point the oldest operating newspaper in Johnston County. It joins fellow Johnston County newspaper, the Johnstonian-Sun.
The Smithfield Herald advertised War Bonds during World War I
The Herald is published semiweekly and offers local and national headlines of interest. During this time period, the Herald contained coverage from the different fronts in World War I. The newspaper also advertised local businesses who sold war bonds to support the war effort. Many local headlines are more innocuous, though – one issue had an article on how a local woman entertained a party at a local dance hall with games and ice cream. In addition, the paper also had smaller short stories, poems or jokes.
Having the Smithfield Herald added to our collection grows our knowledge of what Johnston County was like during that time period and is an invaluable resource. To browse through other materials from the Johnston County Heritage Center, check out their partner page, or visit their website.
The following microfilmed newspapers were selected for digitization in 2017-2018. Thanks to supplemental funding from the State Library of North Carolina, we were able to complete more reels than in previous years. Reels were chosen from nominations according to our Criteria for Selecting Newspapers to Digitize from Microfilm.
| Title |
Years |
Nominating Institution |
| Alamance Gleaner (Graham, N.C.) |
1927-1947 |
Alamance County Public Libraries |
| Carolina Indian Voice (Pembroke, N.C.) |
1977-1995 |
UNC Chapel Hill |
| Carteret County News-Times (Morehead City, N.C.) |
1948-1960 |
Carteret County Public Library |
| Charlotte Post |
1971-1987 |
Johnson C. Smith University |
| The Cherokee Scout (Murphy, N.C.) |
1944-1988 |
Murphy Public Library |
| Duplin Times (Warsaw, N.C.) |
1962-1985 |
Duplin County Library |
| Enterprise (Williamston, N.C.) |
1934-1942 |
Martin Memorial Library |
| Farmville Enterprise |
1942-1947 |
Farmville Public Library |
| Franklin Press and the Highlands Maconian (Franklin, N.C.) |
1943-1960 |
Fontana Regional Library |
| The Franklin Times (Louisburg, N.C.) |
1925-1944; 1963-1969 |
Louisburg College |
| Hertford County Herald (Ahoskie, N.C.) |
1914-1923 |
Chowan University |
| Journal-Patriot (North Wilkesboro, N.C.) |
1947-1950 |
Wilkes County Public Library |
| Mount Airy News |
1917-1929 |
Surry Community College |
| News-Record (Marshall, N.C.) |
1976-1988 |
Madison County Public Library |
| Perquimans Weekly (Hertford, N.C.) |
1944-1989 |
Perquimans County Library |
| Pilot (Southern Pines, N.C.) |
1948-1965 |
Southern Pines Public Library |
| The Roxboro Courier (Roxboro, N.C.) |
1927-1935 |
Person County Public Library |
| Smithfield Herald |
1901-1911 |
Johnston County Heritage Center |
| Transylvania Times (Brevard, N.C.) |
1933-1940 |
Transylvania County Library |
| Watauga Democrat (Boone, N.C.) |
1950-1963 |
Watauga County Public Library |
| Waynesville Mountaineer |
1952-1956 |
Haywood County Public Library |
| Winston-Salem Chronicle |
1997-2016 |
Forsyth County Public Library |
