From photos and papers documenting Albemarle schools to ledgers and scrapbooks of local citizens, we’ve uploaded more materials from the Stanly County Museum. One of our favorite items is the Marvin R. Stokes scrapbook, which has photographs related to his military service as well as action shots of motorcycle and car racing in Charlotte, like the one at right (page 9).
Yearbooks and School-Related Materials:
Scrapbooks:
Ledgers:
Ephemera:
There were also a number of photos added to those already available in the Images of North Carolina collection. You can also view all items from the Stanly County Museum.
One of the more recent items we’ve digitized from the Stanly County Museum is the “Copy of Robert E. Lee’s Farewell Address and Parole Slip of Confederate Soldier E. S. Swaringen, 1865.” It’s a self-explanatory title, and despite the historic nature of Lee’s address the Parole was probably of equal or more import to Swaringen. The well-worn parole pass is pictured below.
Dated April 10, 1865 at Appomattox Court House, Va., the pass reads: “The Bearer, Sargt E. S. Swaringen of Co. “I” 52nd Regt. of N. C. D., a Paroled Prisoner of the Army of Northern Virginia, has permission to go to his home, and there remain undisturbed.” It is signed S[amuel]. Lilly.
After Lee’s surrender, over 28,000 parole passes like this one were given out to Confederate soldiers who agreed not to fight — who would give up their arms and proceed home. The blank passes were printed in the field, the operation being directed by Major General John Gibbon who recalled the difficulty of producing so many in such a short period of time. It’s interesting to think about printing logistics compared with an event as momentous as the end of a war. Printing and filling out those passes would be like supplying every person in the city of Sanford NC with a small form within 24 hours.
E. S. Swaringen, the bearer of the pass, was Eli Shankle Swaringen or Swearingen (1836-1913) of Stanly County, North Carolina. The Swaringen family was and is prominent in Stanly County; William Swaringen was one of the first justices of the peace. During the Civil War, the 52nd Regiment, of which Eli was a part, was organized on 22 April 1862 near Raleigh. You can read a more extensive description of the Regiment’s activities in Volume 3 of the Histories of the Several Regiments and Battalions from North Carolina, in the Great War 1861-’65, p. 223 [271 online].
Swaringen and family are buried at Randall United Methodist Church in Norwood, North Carolina, and his tombstone, albeit slightly hard to read, is pictured here.
You can see more Stanly County Museum items at digitalnc.org.
We’ve added a number of newly scanned items from the Stanly County Museum to DigitalNC.org. It’s a wide variety of content:
- Archer’s BBQ Restaurant scrapbook, 1956-1959
- Delta Kappa Gamma Society minutes, booklets, and histories, 1951-1979
- Minute books and ledgers from the Blackmer Masonic Lodge, 1850-1928
- The Stanly Mason newspaper, several issues from 1955, 1959, 1960
- The Full Moon, Albemarle High School’s student newspaper, issues dating from 1931-1990
- Sketch of Hydrants and Hose Houses, Badin, NC, 1924
- Commencement Exercises from Millingport High School, 1939-1940
- Copy of Robert E. Lee’s Farewell Address and Parole Slip of Confederate Soldier E. S. Swaringen, 1865
You can see all of Stanly County Museum’s items in DigitalNC.
Scrapbooks featuring newspaper clippings of Stanly County and Albemarle men and women in World War II are now available at DigitalNC.org. When families received letters or news of their soldiers, The Stanly Observer helped share the updates with the whole community. The majority of stories discuss promotions, furloughs, and training. Some highlights include news of men from the area in North Africa and reuniting with familiar faces and enjoying free cigarettes courtesy of a public program sponsored by Walter B. Hill Post of the American Legion. These scrapbooks are from the collections of the Stanly County Museum.
World War II scrapbooks from Stokes County and Wilson County are also available at DigitalNC.org.
We’ve recently completed digitization of more materials from the Stanly County Museum in Albemarle, N.C. New materials include historic photos, more notebooks and ledgers from 19th-century doctor F. J. Kron, and a few new scrapbooks. One of our favorites was the scrapbook from the “Stanly Squares” a square dancing club in the 1970s and 1980s.
A fascinating group of materials from the collections of the Stanly County Museum in Albemarle is now available on DigitalNC. The newly-digitized content includes:
Visit the Stanly County Museum website to learn more about the history of Stanly County and its people.
This week we have another 41 titles up on DigitalNC! In this batch we have a lot of new papers from Durham and Beaufort, as well as our first additions from Mocksville, Pine Forest, and Kenansville!
Last month we added our first copies of The Nation from Buffalo Springs. The Nation was a handwritten paper published by John McLean Harrington, a Harnett County man who would painstakingly copy each of his papers by hand for his roughly 100 subscribers. This week we have five more of Harrington’s handwritten papers: The Young American from Buffalo Springs, The Weekly Eagle from Pine Forest, and Harrington, N.C.’s The Times, The Weekly News, and The Semi-Weekly News.
Over the next year, we’ll be adding millions of newspaper images to DigitalNC. These images were originally digitized a number of years ago in a partnership with Newspapers.com. That project focused on scanning microfilmed papers published before 1923 held by the North Carolina Collection in Wilson Special Collections Library. While you can currently search all of those pre-1923 issues on Newspapers.com, over the next year we will also make them available in our newspaper database as well. This will allow you to search that content alongside the 2 million pages already on our site – all completely open access and free to use.
This week’s additions include:
- The Clinton Independent (Clinton, N.C.) – 1856-1858
- Eastern Courier (Hertford, N.C.) – 1895-1896
- The Nation (Buffalo Springs, N.C.) – 1858
- The Young American (Buffalo Springs, N.C.) – 1858
- The Weekly Eagle (Pine Forest, N.C.) – 1860
- The Eagle (Fayetteville, N.C.) – 1868-1873
- The Semi-Weekly News (Harrington, N.C.) – 1860
- The Weekly News (Harrington, N.C.) – 1860-1864
- The Times (Harrington, N.C.) – 1867-1869
- Eastern Carolina News (Kenansville, N.C.) – 1908-1911
- The Chronicle (Albemarle, N.C.) – 1916-1917
- The Enterprise (Albemarle, N.C.) – 1917-1918
- The Albemarle Enterprise (Albemarle, N.C.) – 1919
- The News (Albemarle, N.C.) – 1919
- Stanly County Herald (Albemarle, N.C.) – 1919
- The Stanly News-Herald (Albemarle, N.C.) – 1919
- The Weekly Record (Beaufort, N.C.) – 1887-1888
- The Beaufort Eagle (Beaufort, N.C.) – 1876
- The Herald (Beaufort, N.C.) – 1893
- Beaufort Journal (Beaufort, N.C.) – 1857-1858
- Carteret County Telephone (Beaufort, N.C.) – 1881-1885
- The Clayton Bud (Clayton, N.C.) – 1883-1886
- The Weekly Bud (Smithfield, N.C.) – 1886-1887
- Creedmoor Times-News (Creedmoor, N.C.) – 1915-1919
- Durham Daily Dispatch (Durham, N.C.) – 1880
- The Durham Herald (Durham, N.C.) – 1876
- The Durham County Republican (Durham, N.C.) – 1884
- The Truth (Durham, N.C.) – 1884
- Daily Record (Durham, N.C.) – 1898
- The Daily Reporter (Durham, N.C.) – 1885
- The Durham Weekly Globe (Durham, N.C.) – 1889-1892
- Durham Globe (Durham, N.C.) – 1895-1896
- Saturday Night (Durham, N.C.) – 1893
- The Patriot (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1826-1827
- The Carolina Beacon (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1836-1837
- Southern Telescope (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1837
- The Carolina Patriot (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1837-1839
- The Davie Times (Mocksville, N.C.) – 1887-1903
- The Davie Record (Mocksville, N.C.) – 1899-1922
- Chatham Observer (Pittsboro, N.C.) – 1901-1904
- Chatham Citizen (Pittsboro, N.C.) – 1897-1899
- The Day (Oxford, N.C.) – 1890-1892
- The Concord Times (Concord, N.C.) – 1895-1897
- The Evening Tribune (Concord, N.C.) – 1904-1910
- Concord Daily Tribune (Concord, N.C.) – 1910-1921
If you want to see all of the newspapers we have available on DigitalNC, you can find them here. Thanks to UNC-Chapel Hill Libraries for permission to and support for adding all of this content as well as the content to come. We also thank the North Caroliniana Society for providing funding to support staff working on this project.
Thanks to our new partner Stanly Community College, we now have newspaper clippings about the school from the 1974-1975 academic year to 2021. Many of the articles describe the activities and accomplishments of the Stanly Community College chapter of Phi Beta Lambda (PBL), a professional organization for students studying business.
While several articles detail the impact that the SCC Phi Beta Lambda chapter had in the Albemarle community, a few connect the organization to a larger context. In 1981, for example, PBL students partnered with community leaders to hold a ceremony celebrating the safe return of United States citizens and diplomats after the Iran Hostage Crisis. The PBL president, vice president, historian, and treasurer were supported by Albemarle Mayor Carlton B. Holt and Tony Lowder, chairman of the Stanly County Board of Commissioners, along with several church leaders.
Most of the newspaper clippings come from The Stanly News & Press, a local paper of Stanly County.
To learn more about Stanly Community College, please visit their website.
The full Stanly Community College collection can be found here. To see more newspapers from around North Carolina, please click here.
Thanks to our partner, Stanly County Museum, two batches containing West Badin High School yearbooks for the years 1955-1959 and 1962-1966 are now available on our website here and here. West Badin served the students in the Black community of Badin, NC until integration in the late 1960s.
To learn more about the Stanly County Museum, please visit their website.
For more North Carolina African American high school yearbooks, visit our African American high schools collection.
For more yearbooks from across North Carolina, visit our yearbook collection.
Artist Aaron Wallace casts the hand of veteran Will A. Harrison from Guilford County.
Veteran Timothy Morton from Stanly County pictured with the cast of his hand at the North Carolina Veterans Park.
Materials from our new partner, the Arts Council of Fayetteville/Cumberland County, are now available on DigitalNC. These materials document the creation of installations for the North Carolina Veterans Park. The park is located in downtown Fayetteville, and was formally dedicated on July 4, 2011. Installations and plazas in the park explore the theme a “Veteran’s Journey: life before, during, and after service.”
The materials on DigitalNC concern the creation of the Oath of Service Wall and the Community Columns that are located in the Community Plaza of the park. The Oath of Service Wall includes
Materials from each county are represented individually on DigitalNC, and include information about the veterans, community members, and artists that facilitated the casting. Many include photographs of the hand molding process and biographical details.
To browse materials in the North Carolina Veterans Park collection, click here. To learn more about the Arts Council of Fayetteville/Cumberland County, take a look at their partner page, or visit their website.
