“From Horse to Horseless,” pages 32 and 33 in History and program commemorating the centennial of Kings Mountain 1874-1974.
Recently, we digitized the 1974 Centennial history and program for Kings Mountain, North Carolina, from new contributing institution Mauney Memorial Library. The booklet includes numerous photographs and a detailed history of the town, with each page sponsored by a different local business. Contents also include various programs for events relevant to the centennial celebration.
This addition to DigitalNC.org is just one of many digitized objects available online related to the celebration of a town or organization’s centennial celebration.
Page 94 and page 96 from the Albemarle, Stanly County Centennial.
Front Cover of the Duke Ellington Centennial Celebration program
Among these materials is the Albemarle, Stanly County Centennial from 1957. The Bridge from Yesterday–Into Tomorrow is an Albemarle Centennial booklet published by the Albemarle-Stanly County Historic Preservation Commission. The booklet includes poetry, personal accounts from locals, and photographs of Albemarle citizens.
A more recent publication is A Duke Ellington Centennial Celebration from 1999. A Duke Ellington Centennial Celebration is a program generated by “Beyond Category: A Symposium on the Life, Works, and Orchestra of Duke Ellington,” a project made possible via the North Carolina Humanities Council. The symposium occurred on February 22-28, 1999, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It included lectures on Jazz and many concerts performed by local and recognized musicians, including Kevin Mahogany and The Heath Brothers.
Page 50 of the East Bend Centennial Scrapbook
Another selection is the August 1987 East Bend Centennial Scrapbook, which commemorates the 100 year anniversary of the town of East Bend, which was founded March 7, 1887.
Click here to browse a selection of North Carolina Memory centennial materials.
Farmville residents Mark Mozingo and Lottie Mozingo, 1972
In addition to North Carolina Memory, DigitalNC’s Images of North Carolina also contains photographs depicting Centennial Celebrations. The 1972 Farmville Centennial Celebration, for instance, has over 150 photographs documenting the centennial parade and the Farmville residents posing for portraits in period costume. Accompanying the photographs is Farmville’s 100th Anniversary book, which contains a detailed history of the town’s founding as well as accounts of notable residents, organizations, and events.
Child Posing with Clown on Main Street, Farmville 1972 Centennial Celebration
You may browse other images from North Carolina centennial celebrations here.
New materials from The Grand Lodge of Ancient, Free and Accepted Masons of North Carolina have now been made available online, including photographs, documents, and various physical objects. These materials provide a glimpse into the activities of North Carolina Masons from the past 200+ years.
Two names that appear multiple times in this bath of materials are Alexander Boyd Andrews Jr. and Grand Master William Polk. Andrews was a lawyer who took an active role in a number of North Carolina institutions: the Masons, the University of North Carolina, and the Episcopal Church. The Southern Historical Collection in the Wilson Library house some of his papers.
Andrews’ Past Potentate Shriner’s Fez
William Polk was a Revolutionary War hero who went on to have an active career in politics. His roots were on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. In addition to being a representative in the North Carolina House of Commons, Polk was a trustee for the University of North Carolina, serving as president for three years, as well as the Masonic Grand Master of the state. He is buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh.
You can view all of the Grand Lodge’s items on DigitalNC here.
Here on our blog, we’ll occasionally be featuring “matchups” that showcase relationships between different items in our collection. Today’s matchup? An image from the Tufts Archives in Pinehurst and newspapers from the Southern Pines Public Library.
Sam Lacks
It’s probably easy to understand why this photo caught our eye. From the Tufts Archives of Pinehurst, NC, it’s of Sam Lacks in 1928. Who was Mr. Lacks?
The information with the photo states he was the “Carolina Bellman.” But you can start to fill in more details about Lacks’ life from our collection, using local newspapers. DigitalNC includes issues of The Pilot from 1920-1948. Courtesy of the Southern Pines Public Library, The Pilot was and is published in Moore County. Using The Pilot, we find out the following:
Mr. Lacks was the “genial” “veteran doorman” of the Carolina Hotel (now part of the Pinehurst Resort). He and his wife, known only as “Mrs. Lacks,” had at least two children: Stanley and Leonard. In 1932, Mrs. Lacks was grade mother for the 11th grade and Leonard Lacks was a junior at UNC Chapel Hill. The family summered in New Hampshire.
Both Stanley and Leonard attended Duke University. The family had connections with Massachusetts, especially Boston, and traveled there frequently. They lived in Marlboro Apartments in Pinehurst.
Mr. Lacks unfortunately made headlines when he broke his leg in an auto accident in 1931 (see right), but we’re kindly informed that he was making a “satisfactory recovery” two weeks later. In 1936, he served as Santa Claus at one of the annual Children’s Christmas parties at the hotel. That article calls him the hotel’s “general factotum.”
The last reference we could find, in 1941, mentions Mr. and Mrs. Lacks, their son Stanley, and Stanley’s new bride — all returning from a trip to Massachusetts.
If Mr. Lacks was as popular as the newspaper suggests, he may still be well remembered around Pinehurst.
North Carolina institutions with digital collections can now have their content added to the Digital Public Library of America through the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center.
With over 5 million records and counting, the DPLA is a national digital library that brings together metadata from digital collections around the country into a single, searchable website. It also makes that metadata available to developers through an API (application programming interface), enabling reuse for all kinds of purposes – from visualization to data mining.<
North Carolina’s participation was announced last night at DPLA Fest in Boston. With over 120,000 items, these North Carolina institutions were partners in the initial launch:
The Digital Heritage Center is working with additional institutions around the state to add even more content from North Carolina. If you are interested in participating, read information about DPLA participation or contact us.
With the recent addition of student yearbooks from Lees-McRae College, we are very pleased to announce the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center has now worked with 100 different institutions. These 100 content partners have contributed an incredible variety of materials related to the history and culture of North Carolina, all of which is easily and freely accessible at DigitalNC.org.
When we began work on the Digital Heritage Center in late 2009, it was always our goal to reach out to as many different organizations as possible. Here’s the breakdown on types of institutions we’ve worked with so far (some institutions represent multiple types, which is why the numbers add to more than 100):
While we’ve worked with institutions in all parts of the state, we have yet to reach every county. Our partners come from 51 different counties, leaving just under half of the state’s counties yet to be represented. In coming years, we’ll continue to reach out the remaining counties, as well as to organizations of all types and sizes who are interested in working with us on our shared goal of promoting and increasing access to North Carolina’s cultural heritage.
Big news for alumni of public universities in North Carolina: student yearbooks from all 15 University of North Carolina system universities are now freely available online. Yearbooks for 14 of the schools have been digitized by the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center and are available in the North Carolina Yearbooks collection on DigitalNC, while yearbooks from North Carolina State University are available through the excellent Historical State digital collection.
These yearbooks are terrific resources for students and alumni, as well as anyone interested in the evolution of higher education and student life in 20th-century North Carolina. There are a total of 774 volumes available from these schools, ranging in date from 1890 (The Hellenian, at UNC-Chapel Hill) to the present.
Pick your alma mater or hometown school from the links below and start browsing:
Most of the yearbooks in the North Carolina College and University Yearbooks collection have sections for senior (or other) class superlatives. These are the folks voted to categories like “Hardest Worker” or “Most Likely to Succeed.” These are for the most part positive distinctions, with the exception of the 1920 Yackety Yack from the University of North Carolina (now the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), which included awards for “Ugliest” (Otto Bryant) and “Laziest” (Luke Umstead).
Unfortunately for Bryant and Umstead, the class of 1920 looks to have been pretty prescient in some of its selections. The pick for “Best Business Man” was Ben Cone, who would become an executive at the Cone Mills Corporation and serve a term as mayor of Greensboro, while the pick for “Best Writer” was Thomas Wolfe, who would go on to write Look Homeward, Angel and You Can’t Go Home Again.
Thanks to our partners at the Edgecombe County Memorial Library, Digital NC has digitized new materials from Tarboro and Edgecombe County, North Carolina. These documents include architectural photographs; minutes, photographs, invitations, and other records from the Edgecombe Magazine Club; a new W.S. Clark ledger from 1909; a scrapbook from the Gettysburg Veterans Reunion of 1913; and a family Bible from the Bridgers family of Edgecombe County.
Additionally, we have added a new collection of materials from Dr. Moses A. Ray (1920-1995), a dentist, mayor, community advocate and leader in Tarboro. Dr. Ray was a graduate of Shaw University and Howard University, where he earned his doctorate in dentistry. After settling in Tarboro in 1946, he helped establish the Edgecombe Credit Union for African-Americans, was a trustee of the Edgecombe Technical Institute, led the East Tarboro Citizens League, was a member of the North Carolina Board of Transportation, and served on the Tarboro Town Council and as the first post-Reconstruction African-American mayor of Tarboro. This list comprises only a portion of the many leadership roles he held in Tarboro over the second half of the twentieth century. His community service was honored with many certificates and plaques that are now available as a part of the collection on Digital NC.
Visitors to the site can also see photographs from throughout Dr. Ray’s life depicting some of his work in the Tarboro community. We have also added a program from a 2015 Phoenix Historical Society educational program honoring his life of service, which further details some of his accomplishments like helping establish low-income housing and paved roads in East Tarboro. The Phoenix Historical Society records and promotes the African-American history of Edgecombe County; researchers can learn more online or in the East Carolina University Manuscript Collection. View the Dr. Moses Ray Collection here and see the rest of our Edgecombe County Memorial Library materials here.
From the 1963 edition of Savannah High School’s The Eagle. From left to right: Dorothy Isler, Nettie Dixon, Alvin McNeal, Thelma Barnes, and Velma Sherrod.
One of the recent SHSAFA events was a fashion show and dinner, which showcased the styles of several members and their families. Perhaps it was inspired by the “Miss Fashionetta Style Show,” another event documented in the 1963 edition of The Eagle. Dorothy Isler (left) is pictured in the “Senior Hall of Fame” since she was nominated as Savannah’s contestant for the event.
This blog is maintained by the staff of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center and features the latest news and highlights from the collections at DigitalNC, an online library of primary sources from organizations across North Carolina.
Most of the yearbooks in the 
