DigitalNC is happy to announce that we are now home to 51 late 19th century issues of Eastern Carolina News. We would like to thank our partners at Trenton Public Library for contributing this new title to our digital newspaper collection.
This weekly newspaper was based out of Trenton, N.C., located on the eastern side of the state in Jones County. The tagline was “A Paper for all Classes of People Who Want the Latest News”. Front pages contained articles on current local and nationwide news, including the news-about-town section “A Week in Trenton”.
Eastern Carolina News also had interest pieces. An example is “Two of the Queerest Craft Ever Constructed,” an article on the Argonaut submarine and, a “craft electricity has made possible,” the roller boat.
Also of note are the reserved spaces for messages from groups supporting the temperance movement, titled either “Temperance Corner” or “Temperance Topics”. Prohibition was ramping up for a nationwide debate in the late 19th century, eventually culminating in the passage of the 18th Amendment in 1918.
For a complete look at the new issues from Eastern Carolina News, you can browse all the front pages by clicking here. And for more information on Trenton Public Library, you can visit their home page here.
This week we’ve added another 60 titles to DigitalNC. Included in this batch is the possible origin of a classic North Carolina ghost story!
The Maco Light story tells of a train conductor name Joe Baldwin who was decapitated in a tragic railway accident near the small community of Maco, North Carolina. Legend has it that the ghost of Mr. Baldwin could be seen walking the tracks at night, carrying a lantern and searching for his misplaced head, but once the railroad was removed in the 1970s he was never seen again.
The Southerner, January 12, 1856
As is the case with most folk tales, the story is passed down and embellished over the years and the origin becomes a little fuzzy. There is no record of a “Joe” Baldwin being involved in a wreck, but the January 12th, 1856 issue of The Southerner has an article detailing a train accident that took place just outside of Wilmington a week earlier. The deceased in this incident is Charles Baldwin, who suffered a fatal head injury during the crash. Given the similarities in these stories, it seems our ghost might have actually stayed in one piece.
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:
Elizabeth City
Greensboro
Hendersonville
Oxford
Rutherfordton
Salem
Salisbury
Southern Pines
Southport
Tarboro
Taylorsville
Warrenton
Washington
- The Republican (Washington, N.C.) – 1839
- Rough and Ready (Washington, N.C.) – 1848
- The Statesman, and Third Congressional District Advertiser (Washington, N.C.) – 1834-1835
- North Carolina Times (Washington, N.C.) – 1856-1860
- The Union Advance Picket (Washington, N.C.) – 1862
- The Eastern Intelligencer (Washington, N.C.) – 1869
- The Union (Washington, N.C.) – 1832
- What Next (Washington, N.C.) – 1876
- Washington Dispatch (Washington, N.C.) – 1857-1861
- Washington Herald (Washington, N.C.) – 1827
- Washington Index (Washington, N.C.) – 1867
- The Washington Gazette (Washington, N.C.) – 1884-1898
Williamston
Wilson
- The North Carolinian (Wilson, N.C.) – 1867-1868
- The Daily News (Wilson, N.C.) – 1900-1901
- The Wilson Ledger (Wilson, N.C.) – 1858-1861
- The Flag of the South (Wilson, N.C.) – 1861
- The Advertiser (Wilson, N.C.) – 1888
- The Advance (Wilson, N.C.) – 1874-1876
- The Wilson News (Wilson, N.C.) – 1899
- The Daily Topic (Wilson, N.C.) – 1873
- Southern Sentinel (Wilson, N.C.) – 1856
- The Little Jewel (Wilson, N.C.) – 1875
Winston
Winston-Salem
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.
This week we have another 38 newspaper titles up on DigitalNC! In this batch, we have issues spanning 33 years from Oxford, N.C. paper Oxford Public Ledger. In addition to being the county seat for Granville County, Oxford is also home to the first female parachutist and inventor of the ripcord: Georgia “Tiny” Broadwick.
Georgia was born April 8, 1893 and weighed only three pounds at birth, earning her the nickname “Tiny.” She was married at age 12, had a child at 13, and was widowed before she was 15. In 1907, her life changed forever when she saw The Broadwicks and their Famous French Aeronauts perform aerial stunts at the North Carolina State Fair. She left home, joined the Broadwicks travelling show, and was legally adopted by the show owner, Charles Broadwick, making her “Tiny” Broadwick.
Georgia ‘Tiny’ Broadwick, 1911. Via Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
In an exhibition in Chicago the week of September 16, 1912, Broadwick became the first woman to parachute from a plane. In 1914, jumped into Lake Michigan, making her the first woman to parachute into a body of water. Also in 1914, she debuted the ripcord in a parachuting demonstration for the U.S. Army, performing the first planned free-fall jump from an airplane. By the end of her career she is said to have performed over 1,100 jumps.
Wilmington Star, January 10, 1914
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:
- Toisnot Transcript (Toisnot, N.C.) – 1876
- Rocky Mount Progress (Rocky Mount, N.C.) – 1880
- The Warsaw Brief Mention (Warsaw, N.C.) – 1880
- The Albemarle Observer (Edenton, N.C.) – 1914-1915
- The Messenger (Fayetteville, N.C.) – 1887-1888
- The Times-Herald (Littleton, N.C.) – 1906-1909
- The Maxton Union (Maxton, N.C.) – 1889-1891
- Waynesville Courier (Waynesville, N.C.) – 1888-1911
- The Waynesville News (Waynesville, N.C.) – 1888
- Siler City Leader (Siler City, N.C.) – 1892
- The Troy Times (Troy, N.C.) – 1888
- The Daily News (Waynesville, N.C.) – 1886
- The Farmer’s Friend (Morganton, N.C.) – 1898
- The Norlina Headlight (Norlina, N.C.) – 1914-1924
- The Public Ledger (Oxford, N.C.) – 1889-1901
- Oxford Public Ledger (Oxford, N.C.) – 1901-1911
- Public Ledger and Oxford Banner (Oxford, N.C.) – 1912-1913
- Public Ledger (Oxford, N.C.) – 1913-1919
- Oxford Public Ledger (Oxford, N.C.) – 1919-1922
- The Tri-Weekly Examiner (Salisbury, N.C.) – 1869-1872
- The Weekly Examiner (Salisbury, N.C.) – 1871-1872
- The Salisbury Examiner (Salisbury, N.C.) – 1881-1883
- The Great Sunny South (Snow Hill, N.C.) – 1898
- The Stovall Courier (Stovall, N.C.) – 1898
- The People’s Paper (Warren Plains, N.C.) – 1895-1896
- Washington Weekly Progress (Washington, N.C.) – 1887-1888
- Washington Progress (Washington, N.C.) – 1888-1891
- The Roxboro Herald (Roxboro, N.C.) – 1881
- The Person County News (Roxboro, N.C.) – 1882-1883
- Person County Courier (Roxboro, N.C.) – 1893-1896
- The Courier (Roxboro, N.C.) – 1896-1910
- The Roxboro Courier (Roxboro, N.C.) – 1911-1917
- The Argonaut (Rocky Mount, N.C.) – 1894
- The Selma News (Selma, N.C.) – 1887
- The Messenger (Siler City, N.C.) – 1898-1900
- The Woman’s Right (Wadesboro, N.C.) – 1874
- The Sunny Home (Toisnot, N.C.) – 1881-1883
- The People’s Press (Salem, N.C.) – 1851-1892
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.
This week we have another 40 titles up on DigitalNC! In this batch we have special editions of Morganton’s The News-Herald that detail the destruction caused to Western North Carolina by “The Great Flood of 1916.”
In July of 1916, two hurricanes hit Western Carolina within a week of each other. The first one came from the Gulf Coast and stalled over the region from the 8th until the 10th, and the second made landfall in South Carolina, reached the mountains on the 15th, and dumped an astounding 22 inches of rain in a 24 hour period.
Asheville Grocery, 1916. Image via ourstate.com
After the storms had passed, the Swannanoa River was a mile wide, the French Broad was four times its normal width, there were over 300 landslides, and the town of Hendersonville was surrounded by a lake. At least 80 people died in the flooding, but since so many people lived in rural areas, the exact number is unknown.
July 18, 1916
July 19, 1916
July 20, 1916
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 Liberty Register (Liberty, N.C.) – 1899-1900
- The Kernersville News (Kernersville, N.C.) – 1883-1888
- Jonesboro Leader (Jonesboro, N.C.) – 1888-1892
- Daily Progress (New Bern, N.C.) – 1860
- The Graphic (Nashville, N.C.) – 1899-1925
- The Constitution (Lincolnton, N.C.) – 1880
- The Union Labor Record (Wilmington, N.C.) – 1922-1937
- The Cottage Visitor (Hendersonville, N.C.) – 1869
- Carolina Observer (Fayetteville, N.C.) – 1831-1832
- The Second Century (Albemarle, N.C.) – 1881
- The News-Herald (Morganton, N.C.) – 1902-1922
- The Greenville Index (Greenville, N.C.) – 1894
- Goldsboro Weekly Argus (Goldsboro, N.C.) – 1914-1915
- The Albemarle Enquirer (Murfreesboro, N.C.) – 1886
- Murfreesboro Index (Murfreesboro, N.C.) – 1887-1896
- Piedmont Press (Hickory, N.C.) – 1873-1887
- The Hickory Press (Hickory, N.C.) – 1897-1900
- Randolph Regulator (Asheboro, N.C.) – 1876-1879
- The Randolph Sun (Asheboro, N.C.) – 1878
- North Carolina Bulletin (Asheboro, N.C.) – 1856-1857
- The New North State (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1871-1877
- Greensboro North State (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1886-1891
- The Daily Workman (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1885-1889
- Greensboro Telegram (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1910-1911
- The Weekly Index (Henderson, N.C.) – 1868-1869
- The Henderson Index (Henderson, N.C.) – 1870
- The Hustler (Henderson, N.C.) – 1899
- Evening Herald (Henderson, N.C.) – 1900
- The Henderson News (Henderson, N.C.) – 1887-1888
- The Vance Farmer (Henderson, N.C.) – 1892
- Henderson Daily Dispatch (Henderson, N.C.) – 1916-1923
- Albemarle Sentinel (Edenton, N.C.) – 1839-1840
- Carolina Miscellany (Edenton, N.C.) – 1832
- North-Carolina Miscellany (Edenton, N.C.) – 1833
- The Edenton Clarion (Edenton, N.C.) – 1880-1881
- Edenton Sentinel, and Albemarle Intelligencer (Edenton, N.C.) – 1841
- Albemarle Bulletin (Edenton, N.C.) – 1850-1851
- American Banner (Edenton, N.C.) – 1856
- The Express (Edenton, N.C.) – 1859
- Eastern Courier (Edenton, N.C.) – 1900
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.
This week we have another 34 newspaper titles up on DigitalNC, including four from Carthage, North Carolina: Former home to the Tyson & Jones Buggy Company.
The “Jones” of the Tyson & Jones Buggy Company was William T. Jones, who was born into slavery and became one of the most well-respected and wealthiest businessmen in Carthage. Born near Elizabethtown in 1833, his father was a plantation owner and his mother was an enslaved person. Prior to the Civil War, he was given his freedom and moved to Fayetteville to work as a painter for a carriage company. It was there that his work was noticed by Thomas Tyson, who convinced him to come to Carthage to work for his fledgling operation in 1857, and by 1859 Jones was made a partner in that company. In 1861, Jones joined the Confederate Army and was subsequently captured by Union forces. While imprisoned at Fort Delaware, Jones began making moonshine from potato peelings and bread crusts and selling it to the Union guards. After Sherman’s March left much of the area devastated, it was the Jones’ moonshine money that allowed the Tyson & Jones Buggy Company to restart production, employing many struggling locals and helping to restart the local economy.
Even though Jones was a captain of industry, North Carolina House of Representatives candidate, and Sunday School teacher with a legacy that lives on in Carthage, it was not widely acknowledged that he wasn’t White. It wasn’t until recently that him being a Black man was recognized as fact and his full story was told.
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 Central Times (Dunn, N.C.) – 1892-1894
- The Albemarle Chronicle (Albemarle, N.C.) – 1912
- The Chronicle (Albemarle, N.C.) – 1912-1915
- Daily Concord Standard (Concord, N.C.) – 1898-1899
- The Chatham Record (Pittsboro, N.C.) – 1899
- Moore Gazette (Carthage, N.C.) – 1881-1885
- The Carthaginian (Carthage, N.C.) – 1878
- Moore Index (Carthage, N.C.) – 1879-1880
- The Southern Protectionist (Carthage, N.C.) – 1888
- The Sampson Democrat (Clinton, N.C.) – 1920-1921
- The High Point Enterprise (High Point, N.C.) – 1893-1915
- Daily Enterprise (High Point, N.C.) – 1906-1908
- The Patriot and Times (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1869
- The Greensboro Patriot (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1869-1918
- Greensboro Patriot (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1880
- The Daily Evening Patriot (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1890
- The Watchman and Harbinger (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1863-1864
- The New North State (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1878
- The North State (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1878-1885
- The Beacon (Greensboro, N.C.) – 1880
- The Rowan Record (China Grove, N.C.) – 1909-1919
- China Grove Record (Salisbury, N.C.) – 1920-1925
- Jackson County Journal (Sylva, N.C.) – 1913-1919
- The Ansonian (Wadesboro, N.C.) – 1907-1908
- The Pender Chronicle (Burgaw, N.C.) – 1912-1943
- Harnett County News (Lillington, N.C.) – 1919-1922
- Goldsboro’ News (Goldsboro, N.C.) – 1867-1873
- Goldsboro Daily Messenger (Goldsboro, N.C.) – 1869
- Goldsboro Daily Argus (Goldsboro, N.C.) – 1911
- The Evening Review (Wilmington, N.C.) – 1875-1877
- The Morning Star (Wilmington, N.C.) – 1881
- The Tribune (Henderson, N.C.) – 1873-1876
- The Henderson Pioneer (Hendersonville, N.C.) – 1866-1867
- The Daily Herald (Hendersonville, N.C.) – 1911-1912
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.
Another 32 newspaper titles are up on DigitalNC this week! Three of these titles are from North Carolina towns that either changed their names or just don’t exist anymore.
First, we have the North Carolina National from Company Shops, North Carolina. Company Shops was a community formed around the railroad car construction and maintenance industry in Alamance County, between Graham and Gibsonville. Due to growing anti-railroad sentiments, the community of Company Shops decided to appoint a committee to change the name of the town in 1887. This committee decided on the name ‘Burlington.’
Next up is Our Home from Beaver Dam, North Carolina. It’s hard to determine exactly where Beaver Dam would have been, but knowing that the paper is from Union County, it seems possible that it was located near Beaverdam Creek, just south of Wingate and Marshville, North Carolina.
Lastly, we have The Hokeville Express from what was once known as Hokeville, or ‘Lincoln Factory,’ North Carolina. It seems likely that the community was named after the affluent Hoke family of Lincolnton. Col. John Hoke was one of the owners of the profitable Lincoln Cotton Mills. Col. Hoke died in 1845 and passed ownership on to his son, also named John Hoke. The factory burned down in 1862, and the following year the Confederate Army began constructing a laboratory on the site to manufacture medicines, such as ether, chloroform, and opiates. Since then the community has gone by the name ‘Laboratory.’
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 Daily Standard (Concord, N.C.) – 1893-1895
- Daily Concord Standard (Concord, N.C.) – 1895-1902
- Southern Voice (Bethel, N.C.) – 1890
- Berea Gazette (Berea, N.C.) – 1877-1878
- North Carolina National (Company Shops, N.C.) – 1882
- The Alliance Weekly (Hillsborough, N.C.) – 1896
- Hillsborough Plaindealer (Hillsborough, N.C.) – 1861
- North Carolina Democrat (Hillsborough, N.C.) – 1849-1850
- The Naked Truth (High Point, N.C.) – 1896
- Farm and Fireside (High Point, N.C.) – 1883
- High Point Reporter (High Point, N.C.) – 1860
- Our Home (Beaver Dam, N.C.) – 1893
- The Progressive Reformer (Kings Mountain, N.C.) – 1896
- The Ashe Reporter (Jefferson, N.C.) – 1892
- The Southern Home (Kernersville, N.C.) – 1887
- The Hokeville Express (Hokeville, N.C.) – 1855
- Gazette (Kinston, N.C.) – 1873
- The Mountaineer (Morganton, N.C.) – 1883
- The Carolina Mountaineer (Morganton, N.C.) – 1883-1884
- The Anglo-Saxon (Rockingham, N.C.) – 1902-1908
- The Ansonian (Polkton, N.C.) – 1874-1876
- Jonesville Enterprise (Jonesville, N.C.) – 1858
- The Rubicon (Yanceyville, N.C.) – 1840
- The Concord Daily Tribune (Concord, N.C.) – 1910-1918
- The Burlington News (Burlington, N.C.) – 1900
- New Berne Weekly Journal (New Bern, N.C.) – 1908-1910
- The Anson Times (Wadesboro, N.C.) – 1881-1886
- The Moore County News (Carthage, N.C.) – 1920-1922
- The Canton Enterprise (Canton, N.C.) – 1920-1942
- The Chatham Record (Pittsboro, N.C.) – 1904-1922
- The Times (Concord, N.C.) – 1885-1894
- The Concord Times (Concord, N.C.) – 1894-1922
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, Tyrrell County Public Library, two batches of materials from Tyrrell and Columbia High School are now available on our website. The first batch features Tyrrell High School’s 1961 yearbook as well as the 1977 edition of Columbia High School’s Swamproots. Filling in gaps from our website, five new Columbia High School yearbooks from the years 1959, 1960, 1965, 1968, and 1972 are included in the second batch.
The Melowtones and Elowettes
Homecoming Queens Vicki Jones and Janet Walker
For more information about the Tyrrell County Pubic Library, please visit their website.
To view our North Carolina African American high school yearbooks, visit our African American high schools collection.
For more yearbooks from across North Carolina, visit our yearbook collection.
The front page of the Winston-Salem Chronicle, June 23, 1988. The article title reads “Community Upset over NAACP Plan” and provides a photo of the Winston-Salem chapter NAACP President Walter Marshall.
In an effort to fill in gaps of the Winston-Salem Chronicle, DigitalNC has added the year 1988 to our digital collection. This brings us to a near completion of digitized issues running from 1974 to 2016, with only the year 2000 missing. We would like to thank our partners at Forsyth County Public Library for making these additions available.
Founded in 1974, The Chronicle serves the community of Winston-Salem, N.C. by focusing their attention on local news. Common topics covered in 1988 include People, Sports, Religion, Forum Q&As, and Letters to the Editor. Part of the African-American press, The Chronicle directs its reporting towards issues and events in and of the Black community, such as addressing company closures and job loss in terms of Black demographics as well as following NAACP disputes. Additionally, Black College Sports Review inserts can be found throughout the year.
As 1988 was an election year, there is also an issue highlighting the local effects of the election aftermath.
Front page of the Winston-Salem Chronicle, November 10, 1988. Headlines include “Republicans Take Lion’s Share; Local Black Contenders Lose”, “Results of National Elections: Who Else Won and Where”, and “Candidates Say Straight Voting Hurt”.
If you would like to browse all of the digitized editions of the Winston-Salem Chronicle available on DigitalNC, click here. To learn more about Forsyth County Public Library, click here, and to see all digitized content we have from them, you can visit their contributor page by clicking here.
An issue of The Carolinian (Raleigh) newspaper from November 6, 1948.
It’s time to announce our annual round of microfilmed newspaper digitization! As in previous years, we’re asking cultural heritage institutions in North Carolina to nominate papers from their communities to be digitized. We’re especially interested in:
- newspapers covering underrepresented regions or communities, and
- newspapers that are not currently available in digital form elsewhere online.
If your institution is in one of these counties, please consider nominating! These are counties that currently have little content represented on DigitalNC. Bertie, Bladen, Camden, Caswell, Clay, Gates, Hoke, Jones, Northampton, Onslow, Pamlico, Swain, Tyrrell.
If you’re interested in nominating a paper and you work at a cultural heritage institution that qualifies as a partner, here’s what to do:
- Check out our criteria for selecting newspapers, listed below.
- Verify that the newspaper you’d like to see digitized exists on microfilm. Email us (digitalnc@unc.edu) if you’re not sure.
- Be prepared to talk with the rights holder(s) to gain written permission to digitize the paper and share it online. We can give you advice on this part, if needed.
- Send us an email with the name of the newspaper you would like to nominate, along with your priority years for scanning. Please talk briefly about how the paper and your institution meet the criteria below.
Nominations will be taken on an ongoing basis, however don’t wait! We typically get many more requests than we can accommodate. Please contact us at digitalnc@unc.edu with questions. We’re looking forward to hearing from you.
Criteria for Selecting Newspapers to Digitize from Microfilm
Titles to be digitized will be selected using the following criteria:
- Does the newspaper document traditionally underrepresented regions or communities?
- Does the newspaper include significant coverage of the local community or largely syndicated content?
- Does the newspaper come from an area of the state that has little representation on DigitalNC? (Titles that have not previously been digitized will be given priority. Here’s a title list and a map showing coverage.)
- Are the images on microfilm legible, or is it difficult to read the text?
- Is the institution willing to obtain permission from the current publisher or rights holder(s) to digitize issues and make them freely available online?
- If the newspaper is selected for digitization, will the nominating institution promote the digital project through programs and announcements?
*Updated 8/9/2019 to add county list.
A partial map of the Mill Villages found in Massey Hill.
Over 120 new photos, news clippings, artifacts, and oral interviews have been digitized and added to DigitalNC, courtesy of the Arts Council of Fayetteville, as part of the Massey Hill Heritage Discovery Project. This project was designed to trace the history of the Massey Hill neighborhood in Fayetteville dating back into the 19th century. Located between Camden Road and Gillespie Street along Southern Avenue, Massey Hill is a neighborhood that grew up alongside the three local textile mills and inspired feelings of family and community among its long-time residents, many of whom lived their whole lives in Massey Hill.
Exterior photo of the Massey Hill Hardware Store
A photo of the Tolar-Hart Mill Water Tower in Fayetteville.
There is a ton of variety in this batch, giving us a vibrant image of what it was like to live and grow up in Massey Hill. Dozens of photos are included, with many highlighting life in the mills, events and celebrations that were held for holidays, and pictures of local schools and schoolchildren. A number of newspaper clippings are also found in this batch, detailing many different parts of life in Massey Hill, including interviews with local residents. One resident, Ida Belle Dallas Parker, also wrote several short stories reminiscing on her childhood and family history in Massey Hill. Finally, a number of oral histories from Massey Hill residents are included – they also discuss their personal histories growing up in Massey Hill, how they feel about the neighborhood, and what it meant to them.
Having these materials on DigitalNC is an important reminder of how we build communities in our lives and what they mean to the people who live there. To browse through other materials from the Arts Council of Fayetteville, check out their partner page or take a look at their website.
