Advertising for alcoholic beverages is far from new – ads promoting the perceived benefits and refreshment of beer go back quite a ways. In honor of National Drink Beer Day, we bring you beer trivia and ads from North Carolina newspapers. Raise a glass and enjoy!
They were importing London Lager to North Carolina as early as 1801. From the Wilmington Gazette.
Go local! This 1860 ad is for a well-known area brewery, the Menzler brewery, near Charlotte. From the Western Democrat.
The Menzler brewery wanted to cater your party – 30 gallons available! From the Western Democrat.
1888 saw 6 breweries erected in North Carolina. From the Wilson Advance.
This 1906 beer advertisement promises good health if you drink their pure beer. From the Hickory Democrat.
In 1936 beer ads were still promising health benefits – Schlitz is a glass of sunshine with Vitamin D. From The Enterprise.
Prohibitionists often used newspapers to persuade the public, like they did with this ad from the 1940s calling on voters to reject legalization of alcohol sales in Jackson County. From The Sylva Herald.
Promising comfort during outdoor adventures, legal sale of beer was deemed as the progressive standpoint in this 1961 ad. From The Duplin Times.
As their website notes, the impact of Southwestern CC is widespread in the southwestern mountain communities of North Carolina. Based in Sylva, the college has a wide alumni base, especially in Jackson, Macon, and Swain counties. It is the second-most western community college in North Carolina (after Tri-County Community College in Murphy), and it is the only community college with a scientific partnership with NASA.
This week we have another 30 newspaper titles up on DigitalNC! In the September 3, 1891 issue of Boone’s Watauga Democrat we have an article describing the terrible train wreck of Bostian’s Bridge in Statesville. This fatal accident sparked a legendary North Carolina ghost story, but perhaps even scarier are the boogeymen railroad companies would often create to avoid accountability: train wreckers.
Watauga Democrat, September 3, 1891
News and Observer, July 7, 1898
By 1891 the railroad system in America had exploded, allowing for easier cross-country travel and bringing with it fresh new paranoia about disasters and scary strangers coming to your town. Blaming a wreck on some shady character was a lot easier than paying a fortune on settlements due to negligence. Almost immediately after the August 27, 1891 accident, the Richmond & Danville Railroad Company put out ads offering a $10,000 reward for the apprehension of the perpetrator, leading to many being accused and arrested (conveniently with the help of a railroad detective).
News & Observer, September 4, 1891
Greensboro Workman, September 16, 1891
Asheville Citizen, October 15, 1891
Wilmington Messenger, February 3, 1892
News & Observer, August 29, 1897
Durham Daily Globe, September 26, 1891
The editor at Statesville’s Landmark provides us with an incredibly detailed account of the accident and the recovery effort, complete with interviews from survivors and witnesses where they describe rotten cross-ties and rail workers throwing this evidence into the creek below the bridge. Many of those interviewed make a point to mention that there were no signs of robbery after the crash, which doesn’t exactly support the idea of this being some dastardly deed by a bandit.
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.
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.
The NDNP is a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress with the intention of creating a vast, searchable database of newspapers and other historical documents. You can currently search all of the NDNP issues on the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America website. Those same issues will be available on our newspaper database, allowing you to search that content alongside the other papers on DigitalNC. The week’s titles are the following:
This concludes the list of newspapers that we are sharing from the NDNP. 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.
New materials from the Rockingham County Public Library are now available on DigitalNC. This batch includes photographs, remembrance books, neighborhood histories, newspaper clippings, and a football schedule poster.
Photographs include the one above of Lowes Methodist Church, now Lowes United Methodist, in Reidsville, and one of Charlie Jackson Bennett laying in state in 1953. There are remembrance books for the same Bennett, as well as Carrie Lee H. Bennett and Sylvia Bennett Brown. The funeral home where Sylvia Bennett Brown was laid to rest also created a remembrance plaque, included in this batch of items.
Other items include a variety of materials documenting the history of Mayodan and Stoneville, North Carolina, mostly from the twentieth century. The Carolina Heights neighborhood in Eden, North Carolina, is also represented here by a leaflet sharing its history. Carolina Heights was formerly in Spray, which was consolidated into Eden in 1967. To see all materials on DigitalNC from Spray, click here.
DigitalNC is thankful to our partner, Rockingham County Public Library, for enabling access to these materials online. To learn more about the Rockingham County Public Library, visit their partner page here or their website here. To see all items in this batch, click here, and to see everything contributed by the library, click here.
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.
