The Transylvania Times, May 3, 1956.

Thanks to our partner, Transylvania County Library, new issues of The Transylvania Times are now available on our website. This batch includes issues from the years 1941 to 1975, adding over 1,000 issues. Published weekly, the paper focuses on education updates (such as at Brevard College and high school), music camps and performances, local and national news, and community events. Featured articles and topics from this batch include the end of World War II and the fight against polio.

Present in many issues of The Transylvania Times are advertisements and articles highlighting polio—information on the disease, how to keep your household safe and sanitized, and March of Dimes fundraisers. In 1955, the poliomyelitis (polio) vaccine was made available in the United States. In the same year, the March of Dimes organization had one of its largest fundraising efforts with the hopes of raising enough money to vaccinate nine million 1st and 2nd graders throughout the United States. In the Brevard branch of the organization, citizens were encouraged to donate what they could and to donate again. The more that the community donated to the organization, the more doses of the vaccine could be created and distributed across the country. Unfortunately the Cutter Incident (where some batches of the vaccine contained live polio virus) significantly decreased the distribution and the American people’s faith in the vaccine. Eventually that faith was restored with a revamped system of regulating vaccines and development of more polio vaccines such as the Sabin oral vaccine. Twenty-four years after the release of the first vaccine, in 1979, the United States was declared polio-free.

The Transylvania Times, January 9, 1964.

To learn more about the Transylvania County Library, please visit their website.

To view all issues of The Transylvania Times, please click here.

To view more newspapers from around North Carolina, please click here.

Front page of the March 8, 1934, issue of The Transylvania Times

Issues from 1933 to 1940 of The Transylvania Times have recently been transferred from microfilm and are now available on DigitalNC. The paper, published in Brevard, North Carolina, recounts news from throughout Transylvania County.

As the “only newspaper published in Transylvania County” at that time, the publication includes information regarding local events, education updates (from both Rosman and Brevard high schools), notices of sales, society and club news, advertisements, as well as news from beyond the county. A regular section called “Scenes and Persons in the Current News” features international news covering topics such as the Spanish Civil War and the shifting hands of the British monarchy. Additionally, many issues include “The Sunny Side of Life,” a series of comics that regularly fill a page of the newspaper.

Front page of the “Special Fair Edition” from October 5, 1933

Significant local events are given special weight in this paper, such as the first county fair, featured in the issue from October 5, 1933. For that special issue, the front page features and the next several pages of the issue provide information regarding fair entries and advertisements for the best clothing to wear to the fair. According to the next issue, from October 12, the fair was a success with between four and five thousand attendees over the course of the two days.

“Great Throngs at First County Fair,” from the October 12, 1933 issue of The Transylvania Times

To browse more of our materials from throughout Transylvania County, visit here. Digitized issues of Brevard News and Sylvan Valley News both predate our holdings of The Transylvania Times, and we also have issues of The Echo, covering the nearby Pisgah Forest, available from 1940 to 1954.  Thanks to our partner Transylvania County Library for nominating this paper for digitization!

33 issues of The Transylvania Times have been newly added to DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner, the Transylvania County Library. These are the first issues of the Transylvania Times digitzed on DigitalNC, covering from January to August 1933. The Times joins other newspapers that cover Brevard and Transylvania County, including the Brevard News, the Sylvan Valley News, and the Echo.

At that time of publication, the Times was a weekly newspaper, including local news, some national news, comic strips, brief prayers, and news about the local schools and colleges. In the article to the right, the Times announced the creation of Brevard College, a private college in Brevard, North Carolina. It was created after Weaver and Rutherford Colleges were merged to create a single co-ed Methodist Junior College on the property of the Brevard Institute. Judging from the article, the townspeople were very enthusiastic about the decision, with congratulations pouring in from as far as Charlotte. Brevard College eventually opened in the fall of 1934.

Gaining the Transylvania Times to our collection is invaluable to helping us learn about the life of North Carolinians in Appalachia in the beginning of the 20th century. To browse through other materials from the Transylvania County Library, take a look at their partner page, or check out their website.

Eight more years and over 4300 new pages of the Brevard News have been digitized and added to DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner, the Transylvania County Library. Previously, issues of the Brevard News only covered from 1917 to 1923, but DigitalNC now includes January 1924 through December 1932. This means that DigitalNC now contains digitized versions of the entire run of Brevard News, from its beginning to when it folded in 1932. It joins fellow Transylvania county newspapers the Sylvan Valley News, The Echo, and The Transylvania Times.

A snippet from a December 1927 article advertising Santa Claus coming to Brevard

In February 1930, farm agents warned local farmers not to focus only on tobacco for their sole income

Much of the articles cover local news, including residents of note and local politicians, events that were happening at the time, and advice for farmers in the area. For example, in early 1930, the Brevard Banking Company announced it would help fund 50 farmers to plant one acre of tobacco each in order to bring money into Transylvania County, like it did to nearby Madison County. However, local farm agents cautioned farmers not to get too carried away with profitable tobacco farming, and to focus on grains and other existing crops first.

To browse through other materials from the Transylvania County Library, take a look at their partner page, or check out their website.

In the 1930s, watching Europe slide gradually toward war, Harry Straus foresaw trouble relying on France as the chief supplier of cigarette papers to the United States. He began researching and developing paper manufacturing techniques using flax, garnering support from cigarette manufacturers for a company to be located in North Carolina. In 1939, his Ecusta Paper Corporation began making cigarette papers in Pisgah Forest, NC. (See “Brief History of Ecusta Is Given” September 1, 1946.)

This image from the July 1949 issue shows a company picnic. There were separate bingo tables for white and Black employees.

The mill flourished during World War II and beyond, quickly diversifying beyond cigarette papers to writing paper and other flax-based products, eventually moving on to plastics and cellophane. It operated as a mill, under various owners, until it closed 2002.

The Echo was a monthly newspaper produced by the mill from 1940-1954. Like other mill papers from small towns (like the Badin Bulletin and the Chatham Blanketeer) The Echo not only describes events at the company but also documents the lives of its employees and the surrounding towns. Each mill department gets its own column, in which employees’ vacations, illnesses, social exploits, and private jokes are described in great detail. A typical paper from the 1940s shows photos of the many recreational activities provided at Ecusta (square dancing, baseball, and dramatic clubs) right after the “Safety Page,” which educates employees on mill safety procedures as well as accident statistics.

The paper changed physical format a bit in its later years, and included a lot more photos. However the details of employees’ family lives remains central. The final issue states that the company paper changed to the Olin Mathieson News in 1955, after the Olin Mathieson Chemical Corporation, the current company owner.

The Echo is available online in partnership with the Transylvania County Library.