We’ve just added scrapbooks, a town ledger, and several additional yearbooks from Rockingham County Public Library, part of the collaborative Rockingham County Legacy project.
Two Rockingham County Library programs from the 1970s are documented in these digitized scrapbooks. The Drop-in-Library (DIL) was a grant-funded initiative to bring resources, especially audio-visual ones, to children who couldn’t get to a physical library branch. The DIL van “dropped in” to residential areas, head start programs, day cares, schools, and other parts of the community, where staff would present filmstrips, read books, and provide the children with a variety of activities. The scrapbooks include newspaper articles, promotional materials, and documentation about the program, as well as photographs showing children taking advantage of the DILmobile’s resources. The Special Outreach Services (SOS) program similarly offered services to those who had trouble getting to a branch. This service delivered large print books and other materials via station wagon to the homebound.
This most recent batch also includes a Property Tax Register from the town of Madison, as well as more yearbooks for Booker T. Washington High School, John Motley Morehead High School, and Stoneville High School. There are now over 120 yearbooks from Rockingham County institutions available on DigitalNC.
Example page from the Public School Register, showing list of students in attendance as well as general school information at the top.
We’ve just added a mixture of items from Rockingham County Public Library to DigitalNC. Of interest to genealogists will be an early public school register that lists students from 1891-1897, along with the names of their parents/guardians. At the top of each two-page spread is a list of textbooks used by the class, and the school teacher’s salary (usually around $22.00).
We’re also excited about providing full-text searchability to seven volumes of obituaries clipped from the Madison Messenger as well as other newspapers. See links to these items below.
Finally, this batch includes a number of ledgers documenting activity at Rockingham libraries, and records of a local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
These items are all a part of the Rockingham County Legacy Project, which brings together resources from several institutions in that county.
Honor Roll of Rockingham County, page 46.
New items for the Rockingham County Legacy: A Digital Heritage Project exhibit, contributed by the Rockingham County Public Library, are now available on DigitalNC.
Of note is the Honor Roll of Rockingham County. This book is full of portraits of Rockingham county men and women who served during World War II. Beneath each portrait are details including the names of parents, hometown, and service dates. African American servicemen are included separately at the last few pages.
Also new are the following scrapbooks, ledgers, cards, and yearbook:
Color slides featuring library technology from the 1980s are now available at DigitalNC.org. The slides come from the Rockingham County Public Library and feature an early version of a computerized card catalog as well as microfilm and microfiche readers. The slides also feature the audiovisual equipment available for use in the library, some examples of patrons using the equipment in the Listening Room, and computer terminals available for patron use.
A portrait of James Madison Tesh
Ten early photographs from Stokes County are now available in the Images of North Carolina collection on DigitalNC. Most of the photos were taken by James Madison Tesh, a photographer based in Danbury and Madison, N.C., in the early 1870s. There is also one portrait of Tesh. All of the photos are portraits of local people, with the exception of a carte-de-visite showing the Stokes County Courthouse around 1870.
The original photographs are in the collection of the
Stokes County Historical Society in Danbury. Several of the portraits in this collection are unidentified — if you recognize any of the individuals pictured here, please share your information in the comments section at the bottom of the page for that image.
This week we have another 32 titles up on DigitalNC! Eleven of these papers are from Asheville, including a few with a focus on the organized labor movement.
When people think of North Carolina, unions aren’t typically the first thing that come to mind, which makes sense since the state has the second lowest union representation rate in the country at 2.6%, only beating South Carolina by about 1%. However, in the first half of the 20th century, the labor movement was alive and well, that is until North Carolina officially became a Right-To-Work state in 1947, greatly limiting the power of unions in the state. In the 1950s, the unionization rate was 9% and it has been on the decline ever since.
The Workman, March 30, 1901
The Asheville Banner, July 30, 1931
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 Elkin Tribune (Elkin, N.C.) – 1914-1920
- The Progress (Enfield, N.C.) – 1922-1924
- The North Carolina Times (Louisburg, N.C.) – 1848
- The Monroe Enquirer (Monroe, N.C.) – 1909-1942
- The Morganton Herald (Morganton, N.C.) – 1889-1890
- Rocky Mount Mail (Rocky Mount, N.C.) – 1873-1876
- Person County Courier (Roxboro, N.C.) – 1887-1889
- Johnston Courier (Smithfield, N.C.) – 1878
- Madison County Record (Marshall, N.C.) – 1902-1910
- The French Broad News (Marshall, N.C.) – 1907-1911
- Law’s Lash (Moravian Falls, N.C.) – 1911-1914
- The Lash (Moravian Falls, N.C.) – 1914-1930
- The Murphy Advance (Murphy, N.C.) – 1889
- Murphy Bulletin (Murphy, N.C.) – 1886-1888
- Union and Scottish Chief (Maxton, N.C.) – 1892-1893
- Scottish Chief (Maxton, N.C.) – 1893-1894
- Maxton Scottish Chief (Maxton, N.C.) – 1894-1898
- Southern Illustrated Age (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1875
- North Carolina Christian Advocate (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1856-1861
- The Eclectic (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1892
- The Special Informer (Raleigh, N.C.) – 1892
- Anti-Saloon Advocate (Asheville, N.C.) – 1905
- The Freeman (Asheville, N.C.) – 1933
- Asheville Life (Asheville, N.C.) – 1930
- Asheville Herald (Asheville, N.C.) – 1933
- The Asheville Banner (Asheville, N.C.) – 1931
- The Good Roads Bulletin (Asheville, N.C.) – 1900
- The Workman (Asheville, N.C.) – 1901
- Our Mountain Home (Asheville, N.C.) – 1906
- The Church Advocate (Asheville, N.C.) – 1943
- Mountain Home-Journal (Asheville, N.C.) – 1891
- Western North Carolina Methodist (Asheville, N.C.) – 1891-1892
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.
A variety of Hilltop mastheads used over the years. Top to bottom: June 18, 1927; March 18, 1948; August 29, 1975; October 1, 1976; May 1, 1992. Left: February 2, 1995.
Seventy years of The Hilltop, Mars Hill University’s student newspaper, have been added to DigitalNC. The 924 issues were provided by our partner, Mars Hill University, and cover academic years from 1926-1995.
Mars Hill University is located in Mars Hill, a town in Madison County approximately 20 minutes north of Asheville in the mountains of western North Carolina. According to the university’s website, it is “the oldest institution of higher learning in western North Carolina on its original site.”
Image of the first building at Mars Hill College taken from the October 27, 1934 issue of The Hilltop.
The university is a private four-year liberal arts institution founded in 1856 by Baptist families to provide an education for their children based on the Baptist faith. While no longer directly associated with any religious organization, the university identifies as “an academic community rooted in the Christian faith.”
An article introducing the new Mars Hill College newspaper from the first issue dated September 25, 1926.
First founded as the French Broad Baptist Institute, the name was not long after changed to Mars Hill College. In 2013, it became Mars Hill University to reflect the institution’s growth in enrollment and the variety of educational offerings. Students began publishing The Hilltop when the institution was still Mars Hill College. It is the official student newspaper created to cover campus news for the students, faculty, and staff.
Articles cover a wide variety of topics. The first issue from 1926 reports on campus beautification efforts, student enrollment, activities of campus organizations, the upcoming football season, and more. Faculty and staff news is also covered, with reports on new hires, retirements, and milestone events. To read these and thousands of other articles, visit and browse the Mars Hill University Student Newspaper page.
List of staff members for The Hilltop from the September 25, 1926 issue (left) and March 30, 1995 issue (right) who worked to bring news to the campus community.
The Mars Hill University yearbook, The Laurel, is also available on DigitalNC with editions from 1917-2016. For more information about these and other materials from Mars Hill University, check out their partner page or their official website.
Happy New Years wishes from the News-Record as 1977 turned into 1978
Twelve years and over 7200 pages of the News-Record have been added to DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner, the Madison County Public Library. The collection had previously covered from 1912 to 1976 sporadically – these new pages cover from 1976 to 1988, adding over 650 issues to our holdings. Based out of Marshall, the News-Record is a weekly newspaper that covers Marshall, Mars Hill, and the rest of Madison County.
Many news articles found in the News-Record dealt with local municipal issues, political events, or updates for local sports teams. In the snippet on the right, a September 1979 article announced to local residents how cable television would be coming to Marshall and Mars Hill later that fall. While the wiring and antennas were largely in place for the town, the Clearview Cable Company still required approval to lay wiring across railroad tracks in Marshall. At the time, the monthly charge for cable was $7.75, and that gave residents 12 channels.
To browse through other materials from the Madison County Public Library, check out their partner page, or visit the Madison County Public Library website.
Eight more years and over 4300 new pages of the Brevard News have been digitized and added to DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner, the Transylvania County Library. Previously, issues of the Brevard News only covered from 1917 to 1923, but DigitalNC now includes January 1924 through December 1932. This means that DigitalNC now contains digitized versions of the entire run of Brevard News, from its beginning to when it folded in 1932. It joins fellow Transylvania county newspapers the Sylvan Valley News, The Echo, and The Transylvania Times.
A snippet from a December 1927 article advertising Santa Claus coming to Brevard
In February 1930, farm agents warned local farmers not to focus only on tobacco for their sole income
Much of the articles cover local news, including residents of note and local politicians, events that were happening at the time, and advice for farmers in the area. For example, in early 1930, the Brevard Banking Company announced it would help fund 50 farmers to plant one acre of tobacco each in order to bring money into Transylvania County, like it did to nearby Madison County. However, local farm agents cautioned farmers not to get too carried away with profitable tobacco farming, and to focus on grains and other existing crops first.
To browse through other materials from the Transylvania County Library, take a look at their partner page, or check out their website.
The following microfilmed newspapers were selected for digitization in 2017-2018. Thanks to supplemental funding from the State Library of North Carolina, we were able to complete more reels than in previous years. Reels were chosen from nominations according to our Criteria for Selecting Newspapers to Digitize from Microfilm.
| Title |
Years |
Nominating Institution |
| Alamance Gleaner (Graham, N.C.) |
1927-1947 |
Alamance County Public Libraries |
| Carolina Indian Voice (Pembroke, N.C.) |
1977-1995 |
UNC Chapel Hill |
| Carteret County News-Times (Morehead City, N.C.) |
1948-1960 |
Carteret County Public Library |
| Charlotte Post |
1971-1987 |
Johnson C. Smith University |
| The Cherokee Scout (Murphy, N.C.) |
1944-1988 |
Murphy Public Library |
| Duplin Times (Warsaw, N.C.) |
1962-1985 |
Duplin County Library |
| Enterprise (Williamston, N.C.) |
1934-1942 |
Martin Memorial Library |
| Farmville Enterprise |
1942-1947 |
Farmville Public Library |
| Franklin Press and the Highlands Maconian (Franklin, N.C.) |
1943-1960 |
Fontana Regional Library |
| The Franklin Times (Louisburg, N.C.) |
1925-1944; 1963-1969 |
Louisburg College |
| Hertford County Herald (Ahoskie, N.C.) |
1914-1923 |
Chowan University |
| Journal-Patriot (North Wilkesboro, N.C.) |
1947-1950 |
Wilkes County Public Library |
| Mount Airy News |
1917-1929 |
Surry Community College |
| News-Record (Marshall, N.C.) |
1976-1988 |
Madison County Public Library |
| Perquimans Weekly (Hertford, N.C.) |
1944-1989 |
Perquimans County Library |
| Pilot (Southern Pines, N.C.) |
1948-1965 |
Southern Pines Public Library |
| The Roxboro Courier (Roxboro, N.C.) |
1927-1935 |
Person County Public Library |
| Smithfield Herald |
1901-1911 |
Johnston County Heritage Center |
| Transylvania Times (Brevard, N.C.) |
1933-1940 |
Transylvania County Library |
| Watauga Democrat (Boone, N.C.) |
1950-1963 |
Watauga County Public Library |
| Waynesville Mountaineer |
1952-1956 |
Haywood County Public Library |
| Winston-Salem Chronicle |
1997-2016 |
Forsyth County Public Library |
