Mrs. Ruth Wiley, June 19, 1985.
Thanks to our partner, Rockingham County Public Library, batches containing various materials including Madison-Mayodan High School yearbooks, newspaper clippings of school classes, a hand-written history of The Black Community Heritage of Madison, and 14 issues spanning 1947 to 1997 of Rockingham County’s magazine The Advisor are now available on our website.
One highlight from this batch is the hand-written history of The Black Community Heritage of Madison. Although the material includes history of Black individuals in Madison from around the first recorded migration (~June of 1775), it focuses more heavily on after the Civil War. The work is split up into major topics such as churches, businesses, education, and civic organizations.
In the education section, the document traces the beginning of the Madison Public School System to Mary Black Franklin. Franklin began teaching members of the community in her home and in other various places in the community that would allow her to use the space. The number of students she taught continued to grow until the first public school was founded in a two room building. Eventually, a larger building later named the “Old Hall” was purchased to give the school more space. The school was only in operation six months out of the year. Students were allowed to attend the first three months of school for free, but parents would have to pay a tax for their children to finish the final three months. This system led to the creation of the Madison Public School System.
To learn more about the Rockingham County Public Library, please visit their website.
For more yearbooks from across North Carolina, visit our yearbook collection.
To view more content from Rockingham County Public Library, please visit here.
Thanks to our partner, Olivia Raney Local History Library, the Wake County Public Libraries: A Souvenir Centennial History: 1901-2001 is now available on our website. In this book, Roy C. Dicks outlines the one hundred year history of the Olivia Raney Library and establishing of the Wake County Public Libraries.
To learn more about the Olivia Raney Local Historical Library, visit their site here.
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.
Cover page from the 1957 Laureate
A new batch of yearbooks are now available and online at DigitalNC, courtesy of our partners, the Henderson County Public Library, and the Henderson County Genealogical and Historical Society. The first batch, from HCPL, includes issues of Hendersonville High School’s yearbook, the Laureate, from 1948 to 1961. The second, from the HCGHS, includes more issues of the Laureate, from 1962 to 1963, as well as a 1916 yearbook from Hendersonville High School, which was entitled The Mountaineer. These batches represent the first digitized items from both partners, and we are privileged to have them on our website.
The 1916 Mountaineer has a class poem, class prophecy, valedictorian address, “The A.B.C. of the H.H.S.”. Most others have class portraits, individual portraits, photos of faculty, class photos, sports teams, student clubs and activities, national honor society honorifics. 1956 Laureate also has a dedication for the students themselves at the very end.
These yearbooks are the first items from the Henderson County Public Library and the Henderson County Genealogical and Historical Society, and we are privileged to have them as contributing partners. Having their materials improves our knowledge of what Henderson County life was like for high schoolers in the 20th century.
To learn more from the Henderson County Public Library, please visit their partner page or check out their website. To see more from the Henderson County Genealogical and Historical Society, please take a look at their partner page or visit their website.
The Oxford High School Owl, September 1946
Issues from 8 NC student newspapers are now online at DigitalNC! The issues come from several schools in Granville County and cover news topics like sports, facility renovations, and school events, as well as creative works by students and advertisements for local businesses. The recent batch includes the following newspapers:
The J.F. Webb High School Spectator, February 26, 1965
The newspapers listed above constitute a new addition to the significant number of Granville County Public Library materials already online at DigitalNC. Visit their DigitalNC partner page here or head to the Granville County Library System website for more information.
The latest materials digitized from Rockingham County Public Library are online now, and oh are they wide-ranging. Included in this batch are church bulletins, postcards, audio recordings, local histories, genealogical records, and even an intricate cross stitch of Rockingham County’s not-quite-neighbor, Person County.
Many of these items recount the history of the towns of Leaksville, Draper, and Spray before the three were consolidated into a single town, Eden N.C., in 1967. One of these is the book Leaksville-Spray, North Carolina: A Sketch of its Interests and Industries, which is one of only two copies known to exist today. It gives extensive details about textile and other manufacturing industries in the area during the early twentieth century.
Leaksville’s Morehead Mills was founded by future governor John Motley Morehead, also known as “the Father of Modern North Carolina.”
Other materials included in this batch were created well after Leaksville, Draper, and Spray were incorporated as Eden. The song “The Ballad of Leaksville, Spray, and Draper,” written by Leaksville native John Marshall Carter, laments the merger of the three cities with its chorus of, “I can’t believe that they’ve done this to me, I can’t conceive that they’ve killed history.” This song along with “Olden Days” were digitized from an original 45 rpm record.
“Published Sporadically But Enthusiastically” reads the tagline on the first edition of the Farmer’s Advocate Newsletter.
Also digitized were 70 editions of The Farmer’s Advocate Newsletter from the Historic Jamestown Society — a group dedicated to the preservation of the stories and structures of Jamestown N.C. — spanning from 1975 to 2018.
Rockingham-area genealogists may find some gems in the records of family reunions, vital statistics, church publications, or cemetery survey included in this batch.
All of the items from the most recent batch can be accessed here. To learn more about the Rockingham County Public Library, visit their partner page on DigitalNC or their website.
New to our site is a sizable collection of yearbooks and other campus materials from Greensboro. These items came to us from our partners at the Greensboro History Museum and Greensboro Public Library, and mark the beginning of our partnership with Greensboro Public Library.
Drivers Education at Page High School was clearly not for the faint of heart, as evidenced here in the 1965 Buccaneer.
Included in this batch are 31 yearbooks from Greensboro, Smith, Walter Hines Page, and Bessemer High Schools spanning from 1916 to 1967. There is also a hand-written roster kept by Greensboro Senior High School that contains the names and other information such as colleges attended, marital status, and addresses of the school’s graduates from 1922 to 1966.
The inside cover of the 1954 edition of Whirligig, Greensboro High School’s Yearbook, shows “The Setting of the GHS Story 1953-1954.” This setting includes the bunny hop, a fact-filled science building, the fountain of youth, and many references to Greensboro native O. Henry.
Alongside the yearbooks are student literary magazines from Greensboro High School. These student publications — titled Greensboro High School Magazine, The Sage and Homespun — include poems, plays, stories, and more. The earliest of these digitized in this batch is from 1907 and the most recent from 1960.
The covers for Greensboro High School’s Student Literary magazine — Homespun — creatively depict the theme of each edition. Shown here are four covers of the magazine printed between 1927 and 1931.
Materials from Greensboro History Museum can be found here, and the materials from the Greensboro Public Library here. For more information about Greensboro History Museum, visit their website or partner page. For additional information on Greensboro Public Library, check out their partner page or website.
An exterior shot of Leaksville High School in 1947.
A new batch of several yearbooks from Rockingham County is now available on DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner, the Rockingham County Public Library. Included are six issues of The Pilot from 1937 to 1945, and four issues of The Weaver, from 1947-1952. Both titles are from Leaksville High School and these yearbooks give us a greater picture of what it meant to be a high school student in Rockingham County around that time.
These yearbooks include individual and class portraits, as well as photographs of activities, clubs, and sports teams. Some of the yearbooks also include class histories and the history of Leaksville High School. The 1937 yearbook highlights the changes since the school’s founding in 1905, and notes that the school “no longer is dependent on the janitor to ring the bells,” but instead has a “system of electric clocks, gongs, and bells.” A few of the yearbooks also include poems dedicated to the class, and “last wills and testaments,” where the graduating class would “bequeath” their skills, positions, and duties to upcoming seniors.
1947 photos of the Leaksville High annual yearbook staff (L) and the staff of The Cub Reporter school newspaper (R)
Follow the links below to browse the yearbooks included in this batch:
To see more from Rockingham County Public Library, visit their partner page, or take a look at their website.
An exterior photo of Dunbar High School in 1965.
Nearly twenty years of yearbooks from Rowan County have now been digitized and are available on DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner Rowan Public Library. The yearbooks cover 1950 through 1969, come from Dunbar High School, the town’s Black high school, making them the first yearbooks digitized from the town of East Spencer, N.C. Originally named the East Spencer Negro School, which opened in 1900, the school changed its name to Dunbar High School in 1958.
These yearbooks include individual portraits, class portraits, and photographs of activities, clubs the students joined, and sports played. Some of the class portraits also included “ambitions” – jobs that the students wanted to be when they grew up, like stenographer, teacher, or social worker. A few of the yearbooks also include “last wills and testaments”, where classes would “bequeath” thanks or seats to future seniors, and “class prophecies”, where students imagined and wrote about where they might be in the future.
The Hi-Y club of 1959 at Dunbar High School.
Follow the links below to browse the various yearbooks from Dunbar High School included in this batch:
These yearbooks provide a valuable source of knowledge for what segregated school life in East Spencer, N.C. were like at that time. To learn more about the Rowan Public Library, visit their contributor page, or their website. You can also visit their website for the Edith M. Clark History Room. To see more yearbooks from across North Carolina, you can click here.
A flyer celebrating the service of North Carolinians in the war effort, as well as information war bonds
Four new World War II era scrapbooks have now been digitized and are now available on DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner, the Randolph County Public Library. Stretching from 1943 to 1945, three of the scrapbooks are made up of documents, programs and news clippings about Randolph County service members in the Army and the Navy.
A 1952 advertisement supporting a local vote to construct new buildings for Randolph County schools
Many of the news clippings found in these scrapbooks are of service members being stationed overseas, where they are deployed, soldiers being labeled missing or killed in action, awards given, and more. Looking through these scrapbooks reminds us of the sacrifice that these soldiers gave in support of our state and our country.
The fourth is a scrapbook from 1952 consisting of documents and photos of buildings located throughout Asheboro. Created by Toby Samet, an art student at Asheboro High School, this scrapbook contains photos and other important papers, like a report from the city Asheboro’s 1952 campaign to clean up the city. It is a fascinating look into the past to see what Asheboro was like at that time, and what was considered important by the city.
To see more of their materials and learn about the Randolph County Public Library, visit their partner page or take a look at their website.
