This map advertises some of the parks and wildlife of North Carolina
Thanks to our partner Granville County Public Library, we’ve added several yearbooks from Oxford, N.C. and Mebane, N.C., as well as a few maps, to our digital collection.
This map of North Carolina, called “An Outdoor and Tourist Guide to North Carolina,” was probably created to lure visitors to our brand-new parks; the text alongside it reads, “State Parks in North Carolina are still under development, and at present accommodations and facilities are not completed, except at Fort Macon State Park, Carteret County.” It also lists R. Bruce Etheridge as the director of the Department of Conservation and Development (he served from 1933-1949).
A map of an army plot in Granville County from 1943
Another notable addition is this army map, supposedly used to train troops to read French maps during World War II. Although it shows an area of Granville County near Mountain Creek Church, most of the text is in French.
The other maps show different versions of Henderson, N.C. (one from 1882). They also note the major roads and land owners.
The yearbooks from this batch are primarily from Black High Schools in Oxford, N.C., including Mary Potter High School (1947 and 1953) and Toler High School (1966 and 1967). The yearbooks feature slices of student life, including a personal inscription on the inside cover of the 1953 edition of “The Ram.”
Students in the Library Club at Mary Potter High School, 1953
The other two yearbooks are from Bingham School (Mebane, N.C.) from 1908 and Oxford College, 1921. To see our full collection of North Carolina yearbooks, click here. To see all materials from the Granville County Public library, visit their partner page.
This week we have another 34 titles up on DigitalNC! While this batch focuses heavily on newspapers from Hendersonville, Goldsboro, and Greensboro, it also includes Fayetteville, Henderson, Albemarle, Clinton, Burlington, and our first addition from Bush Hill. Bush Hill (renamed Archdale in 1886) was home to the Annie Florence Petty, who was the first professionally educated and trained librarian in the state of North Carolina. Petty (born 1871) was a founding member of the North Carolina Library Association and, in keeping with her Quaker upbringing, she was also the first secretary of the North Carolina Friends Historical Society. After her prosperous, four-decade long career building the library at the North Carolina State Normal and Industrial School (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro) and other libraries across the state, she retired in 1933 and moved into the family home she shared with her equally successful, chemist sister, Mary Petty.
Mary (left) and Annie Petty in 1952. Image via uncghistory.blogspot.com
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 News Dispatch (Clinton, N.C.) – 1909-1917
- The North Carolina Prohibitionist (Bush Hill, N.C.) – 1886-1888
- The Observer and Gazette (Fayetteville, N.C.) – 1885-1887
- The Stanly Enterprise (Albemarle, N.C.) – 1898-1902
- The Twice-A-Week Dispatch (Burlington, N.C.) – 1913
- Border Review (Henderson, N.C.) – 1879-1880
- The Tobacconist and Review (Henderson, N.C.) – 1881
- The Henderson County Advertiser (Hendersonville, N.C.) – 1874
- The Henderson Times (Hendersonville, N.C.) – 1864
- The Western Courier (Hendersonville, N.C.) – 1878
- Independent Herald (Hendersonville, N.C.) – 1881-1882
- The Hendersonville News (Hendersonville, N.C.) – 1921-1922
- The Daily Rough Notes (Goldsboro, N.C.) – 1861
- Goldsboro’ Daily Rough Notes (Goldsboro, N.C.) – 1868
- Goldsboro’ Telegraph (Goldsboro, N.C.) – 1850
- North Carolina Telegraph (Goldsboro, N.C.) – 1850-1855
- Goldsboro’ Tribune (Goldsboro, N.C.) – 1862
- Goldsboro’ Patriot (Goldsboro, N.C.) – 1849
- The New Era (Goldsboro, N.C.) – 1853-1855
- The Goldsboro Bulletin (Goldsboro, N.C.) – 1883-1884
- The Daily News (Goldsboro, N.C.) – 1865
- Goldsboro’ Daily News (Goldsboro, N.C.) – 1866
- Goldsboro Mail (Goldsboro N.C.) – 1879
- Daily Morning Star (Goldsboro, N.C.) – 1867
- The Republican (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1870
- Daily Southern Citizen (Greensboro, N.C.) -1864
- The Topic (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1869
- Greensboro Union Register (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1869
- The Daily Battle-Ground (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1881
- The Daily Bugle (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1882-1884
- The True American (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1855
- The Southern Democrat (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1890
- Republican Gazette (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1869
- The Labor News (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1908-1909
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 partner, Henderson Institute Historical Museum, a batch containing Henderson Institute school census cards from the early 1900s are now available on our website. These cards feature various information on students including their name, grades, marriage status, address, birth dates, birthplace, and more.
Individual school census card for Henderson Institute student E. Roy Brandon.
Established and operated by the Freedmen’s Board of the United Presbyterian Church to educate the Black community, the Henderson Institute opened its doors to students of Vance County in 1887. The school remained opened for 83 years before its operations as an official high school ceased in 1970 due to integration. During its years of operation, the school served as the only secondary school open to Black individuals in Vance County. In 1986, the Vance County Board of Education deeded the school’s Library Science Building to the Henderson Institute Alumni Association. With funding from graduates, friends, and the general assembly, the association restored and renovated the property. Today the building houses the Henderson Institute Historical Museum.
To learn more about the Henderson Institute Historical Museum, please visit their website.
To view more materials from North Carolina’s African American high schools, please view our North Carolina African American High Schools Collection.
Thanks to our partner, Granville County Public Library, a batch containing yearbooks from Dabney High School, Henderson High School, Franklinton High School, J.F. Webb High School, and Zeb Vance High School ranging from 1938 to 1970 are now available on our website.
To learn more about the Granville County Public Library, please visit their website.
For more yearbooks from across North Carolina, visit our yearbook collection.
A 10th grade typing class in 1967 at the G.C. Shaw High School class in Stovall, N.C.
Several new high school yearbooks from Granville County are now online on DigitalNC, provided by our partner Granville County Public Library. Included are two years of The Hornet by G.C. Hawley High School from 1967 and 1968, the 1967 Pep Pac by Henderson High School, the 1967 Wildcat by J.F. Webb High School, and the 1967 The Pirate by G.C. Shaw High School. The yearbooks contain individual school portraits, group portraits, and photographs of sports, activities and school groups.
A collage of the 1967 senior class officers at G.C. Hawley High School.
To view the yearbooks, visit the links below:
To learn more about Granville County Public Library, visit their partner page or take a look at their website.
A student’s photograph taped into a commencement booklet from 1933
Graduation programs and invitations from the Henderson Institute, provided by the Henderson Institute Historical Museum, are now available on DigitalNC. the Henderson Institute was a high school started in 1887 by the Freedmen’s Mission Board of the United Presbyterian Church. It was closed after the 1969-1970 school year due to integration. Through the years that the school was open, it was the only secondary school open to African Americans in Vance County. Part of the original school building now houses the Henderson Institute Historical Museum.
The collection of 19 graduation programs and invitations date from 1924 through the school’s final 1970 graduation. Although each program is structured differently, many include the full names of the members of the senior graduating class along with a schedule of events.
Also in this collection are five theater programs from the Henderson Institute. These include programs for student productions of The People Versus Maxine Lowe, Rest Assured, and Once in a Lifetime.
Click here to browse through the programs. To learn more about the Henderson Institute Historical Museum, visit their partner page, or take a look at their website.
Pep Pac [1963], page 117
High school yearbooks on DigitalNC often feature interesting, and sometimes weird, traditions. From this batch of yearbooks, Henderson High School sets a new level for interesting traditions. The 1963 “Pep Pac” highlights the high school’s Key Club, which participated in activities to develop leadership skills in young men. Apparently, one of these activities was a Donkey Basketball game, in the high school gym. It appears that this event was hosted mainly to entertain community members, which it is still doing to this day.
Also of interest are the two catalogs from the Oxford Female Seminary from 1883 and 1905. They feature the strict rules and formalities that stand a sharp contrast to the other yearbooks in this batch, which come from the mid-1960s. Each could be useful for someone interested in genealogy of Granville County or Women’s Education in the late 19th to early 20th centuries.
To see more yearbooks from the Granville County Public Library, click here. To learn more about the Granville County Public Library please visit the contributor page or the website.
Pep Pac [1963], page 117
Granville County Public Library has contributed yearbooks and some manuscript volumes to DigitalNC, including the first yearbook on the site from Warren county.
Yearbooks
- The Warrentonian [1949] John Graham High School, Warrenton, N.C.
- Pep-Pac [1948] [1956] Henderson High School, Henderson, N.C.
- Nahiscoan [1954] Nashville High School, Nashville, N.C.
Other Items
You can view all of Granville County Public Library’s content on DigitalNC.
Student yearbooks from schools in Henderson and Middleburg in Vance County, N.C., are now available online in the North Carolina High School Yearbooks collection on DigitalNC.
These join yearbooks of the Henderson Institute that are already online, giving Vance County residents and researchers a terrific resource for community history and memory.
Student yearbooks from the Henderson Institute, an African American school located in Vance County, are now available in the North Carolina High School Yearbooks collection. The Henderson Institute was founded in 1891 and served the community in and around Henderson, N.C. until its closing in 1970. The original yearbooks, ranging from 1952 to 1970, are held by the Henderson Institute Historical Museum, which documents and preserves the history of the school and works closely with the Institute’s active alumni group.
