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Photographs from the Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.) are now available on DigitalNC. These images are from the Charles Killebrew collection, a large collection of photographs from the 1940s through the 1990s now housed at the Braswell Library. Killebrew was a local photographer who operated a studio in Rocky Mount and worked for many years for the Rocky Mount Telegram. Learn more about the collection on the Braswell Library’s Local History & Genealogy page.
The images on DigitalNC were scanned from original negatives and show the variety of this great collection. There are many shots of tobacco farmers and factories, images of floods in Rocky Mount and Princeville, and some wonderful photos of students and teachers in African American schools in the 1950s and 1960s.
We’ve recently worked with Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.) to digitize oral histories, written stories, and a manuscript all created for the book Flooded: Reflections of Hurricane Floyd. Compiled by the Friends of Braswell Library, Flooded represents the culmination of an effort to document what happened in Nash and Edgecombe counties twenty years ago today. On September 16, 1999 Hurricane Floyd hit North Carolina and caused catastrophic flooding throughout the eastern part of the state. Fatalities, displaced families, and property loss marked its passing.
The collection includes interviews with and stories from firefighters and other emergency personnel, city officials, and residents. Many of the interviews include both audio and a transcript. You will also find the original copies of stories included within Flooded, as well as a pre-print version of the book.
Thanks to Braswell Memorial Library and its Friends group for bringing this collection for digitization. Explore the entire Flooded collection or all of the materials we’ve digitized for Braswell Memorial Library.
Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.), covers
14 phone directories are now available for search and use on DigitalNC!
Phone directories, like city directories, offer a wealth of information for researchers and genealogists. Each contains pages dedicated to using the directory and even using a phone. Some of the younger users of this site may have never used a physical phone book, made a collect call, or utilized a phone booth. While that may be shocking to some, resources like these could serve as excellent teaching tools to help younger users and students understand the differences in how people have communicated over the past few decades.
You can see all of the newly digitized directories at the links below:
- Telephone Directory for Raleigh, Apex, Cary, Wendell, Zebulon, and Selma N.C. [Spring-Summer 1930]
- Telephone Directory for Raleigh, Apex, Cary, Wendell, and Zebulon N.C. [March 1925]
- Telephone Directory for Raleigh, Apex, Cary, Wendell, and Zebulon N.C. [September 1925]
- Telephone Directory for Rocky Mount, Enfield, Nashville, Spring Hope, and Whitakers N.C. [December 1949]
- Telephone Directory for Rocky Mount, Enfield, Nashville, Whitakers, and Spring Hope N.C. [1945]
- Telephone Directory for Rocky Mount, Enfield, Nashville, Spring Hope, and Whitakers N.C. [October 1948]
- Telephone Directory for Rocky Mount, Enfield, Nashville, Spring Hope, Tarboro, Whitakers, and Wilson N.C. [Fall 1937]
- Telephone Directory for Rocky Mount, Enfield, Nashville, Whitakers, and Spring Hope [1943]
- Telephone Directory for Rocky Mount, Enfield, Nashville, Spring Hope, Tarboro, Whitakers, and Wilson [1938]
- Telephone Directory for Rocky Mount, Enfield, Nashville, Spring Hope, Tarboro, and Whitakers [1937]
- Telephone Directory for Raleigh, Apex, Cary, Wendell, and Zebulon N.C. [September 1924]
- Telephone Directory for Rocky Mount, Enfield, Nashville, Spring Hope, and Whitakers N.C. [1944]
- Telephone Directory for Rocky Mount, Enfield, Nashville, Spring Hope, Tarboro, Whitakers, and Wilson N.C. [1942]
- Telephone Directory for Rocky Mount, Enfield, Nashville, Spring Hope, Tarboro, Whitakers, and Wilson [1936]
![Telephone Directory for Rocky Mount, Enfield, Nashville, Spring Hope, Tarboro, and Whitakers [1937], page 4](https://www.digitalnc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Untitled-2.png)
Telephone Directory for Rocky Mount, Enfield, Nashville, Spring Hope, Tarboro, and Whitakers [1937], page 4
The Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.) has contributed 43 historic high school yearbooks to the North Carolina High School Yearbooks digital collection. Yearbooks from the following schools are now available online:
As we chip away at newspaper digitization with the North Carolina Newspapers digital project, we often marvel at the amount of work left to be done. We’ve made great progress so far — digitizing well over 60,000 pages in the past year and a half — but there are many millions more to go. However, we sometimes come across especially rare titles that remind us that we should be grateful for those papers that we do have: there are many historic papers from North Carolina that simply have not survived.
We recently worked on some rare, early papers from Nash County from the collections of the Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.) and the
North Carolina Collection at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
For each of these titles, the issues available online now represent the only known copies of these papers. This was a period when newspapers came and went with great frequency, but it’s clear that there were definitely more than one or two issues printed for each of these titles. For example, the issue of The Rattler we put online is labeled as Volume 1, Number 40, meaning that at least 39 issues of this important Populist Party paper are either hidden away in private collections or lost to history.
With our hot summer weather just around the corner, I hope you’ve planned ahead, as the folks behind this sign suggested:
The photo, depicting a table at an Episcopal Church Bazaar in Rocky Mount in 1950, is from the collection of photographer Albert Rabil, and is held by the Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.).
As the Girl Scouts of the USA celebrate their centennial this year, I wanted to look for historic images of Girl Scouts in North Carolina on DigitalNC. It’s clear that the Girl Scouts have been active throughout the state for many decades. Here are a few highlights from the handful of interesting photos and items relating to Girl Scouts on DigitalNC.org.
This photograph of trick-or-treaters in Rocky Mount in 1950 depicts a suspiciously healthy Halloween scene – these costumed kids are offered an apple in lieu of the traditional sweet treat. But since the photographer, Albert Rabil, shot this image for the News and Observer, it’s a fair guess that the apple was a prop, and that the real treats came later.
The photo is shared online by Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.).
Football season is in full swing, a good time to browse the many football-related images on DigitalNC. I found 49 football-related images in the Images of North Carolina collection, and there are countless more in the college and university yearbooks. Here are some of my favorites:
This photo shows the Davidson College football team in 1906, just 18 years after the first collegiate football game was played in North Carolina.
The action shot of a punter seems to be a popular subject for sports photographers. The photo at top is from the Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.); the one at bottom is from the Tufts Archives (Pinehurst, N.C.).
There are several good photos of high school football players and teams on DigitalNC. The top one here shows a player from Lansing High School in Ashe County; the one in the middle of the team from Davie County High School in 1961, and the photo at bottom shows the team from Waynesville Township High School in 1927.
These last three images above are shared by Ashe County Public Library (top), Davie County Public Library (middle), and Haywood County Public Library (bottom).
While North Carolina has fortunately not seen anything this year like the terrible floods currently affecting the Mississippi River, our state is no stranger to the tragedy and disaster caused by flooding. The Images of North Carolina collection currently has 98 different photos of floods and flood damage, showing floods in Rocky Mount, Ashe County, and Davie County.
This image, from the Charles S. Killebrew collection at the Braswell Memorial Library (Rocky Mount, N.C.), shows downtown Rocky Mount in 1962.
