Each scrapbook contains newspaper clippings and notes about various subjects relating to McDowell County, its residents, and its culture. This batch contains information about local churches, doctors, general events from the early to mid twentieth century. Because most of the text included is newsprint, the scrapbooks are full-text searchable, which can make research easier and more efficient.
Several of the highlights from this batch include stories that recognize notable women from McDowell County, including the scrapbooks’ creator Mary Margaret Greenlee. One example is represented in the story on the right about Mrs. Louise Cunningham Byron. Byron trained and worked as a mortician and was interviewed about her breaking the mold in a male-dominated field.
People and Events in McDowell County News, Volume II, page 123
Mrs. Greenlee is also prominently featured in the scrapbooks. Greenlee was a well known educator and advocate in several counties in Western North Carolina. These scrapbooks are excellent resources for learning more about her life, the lives of women and men throughout the county, and about the history of McDowell County.
You can view all of the new scrapbooks in this collection at the links below:
To see all of digitized scrapbooks from the Greenlee Collection, please use the following link. To learn more about McDowell County Public Library, please visit the contributor page or the website.
Included in this batch are several cooking related items. A vintage menu from the Royal Palms Restaurant in Rocky Mount documents the variety of prices and meals available at the local establishment. This item is a unique addition, as DigitalNC only has three published menus on the site. If you are more interested in doing some cooking of your own, check out the Kentucky Cookbook from Bygone Days. This unique item was transcribed from an 18880’s collection of recipes created by several women with connections to North Carolina. The recipes are included along with descriptions and family histories, adding some depth and context to the cookbook’s entries. Try your hand at making some nineteenth century ginger pudding or molasses pie!
Also in this batch are nearly seventy issues of “The Connector,” the newsletter of the Tar River Connections Genealogical Society. The Connector contains articles from members of the society, detailing their research in family and local history. They include many maps, rosters, names, dates, and other information that could be useful genealogy research–all aggregated in one place. These newsletters are full-text searchable, allowing researchers to easy search through the nearly 1200 pages of material. You can view all of the newsletters from Braswell Memorial Library at the following link.
To learn more about Braswell Memorial Library, please visit the contributor page or the website. To see more items like these that are digitized and available on DigitalNC, please visit the North Carolina Memory Collection.
Recipes for Ambrosia Filling, Cream Pie, and Molasses Pie– Kentucky Cookbook, page 39
M.S. Brown: Miscellaneous Baseball Photos, Image 87
Regular followers of DigitalNC are likely familiar with M.S. Brown and the growing collection of photographs he took around Edgecombe County available on the site. Another batch is now available online, courtesy of our partner, Edgecombe County Memorial Library.
This batch features additions to the pageants, boy scouts, and basketball objects and several new objects including auto wrecks, baseball, and children. One object that some might find interesting contains photos published in the “Home Front News.” Members of the Oxford community published this local newspaper during WWII and shipped it local men serving around the country and abroad. It often featured single women in the area that were interested in writing letters to
soldiers. The set includes many of the proofs that M.S. Brown shot for the paper.
Also completed in this batch are several documents and publications relating to the “Tobacco Perspectives” project. The project consisted of an exhibition of tobacco memorabilia and a series of public forums examining the role of tobacco in Edgecombe County’s economy. Organizers hoped to inspire community discussion about the crop’s harmful effects and the county’s dependency on its growth. DigitalNC is also host to several videos of the discussions.
Tobacco Perspectives Brochure
You can view the new materials relating to “Tobacco Perspectives” at the links below:
Above images: The Heritage of Cleveland County Vol. I, page 2 and 3
Thanks to our partner Mauney Memorial Library, genealogy history from Cleveland County is now available on DigitalNC.
Created by the Cleveland County Historical Association and Museum, these volumes document the histories of families and institutions that might have otherwise been lost with the passing of older citizens. County citizens, churches, schools, civic clubs, and other entities were invited to submit stories and material for publication. The volumes include helpful indexes for easy searching and are also full-text searchable, making genealogy research faster and more efficient. This could also be useful resource for teachers working with North Carolina or Cleveland County history.
To learn more about Mauney Memorial Library please visit the contributor page or the home page. To access more great resources for genealogy and family research, please visit the North Carolina Memory Collection, which contains many items that are also full-text searchable.
Edited December 13, 2016 – At the request of the contributing institution, Cleveland County Heritage Vol. II has been removed from our website at this time. We hope in the future to have it available to the public.
Thanks to our partner, the New Bern-Craven County Public Library, DigitalNC is happy to publish several new items that could be extremely useful for our users.
Researchers may find use in the Undertaker’s Record Book, a unique source that documents the business and financial interactions of Merritt Whitley & Sons funeral home. The funeral home was an African American owned family operation which appeared in town records as early as 1890. The owner, Merritt Whitley, was also appointed as the County Undertaker in 1897. His sons, William O. Whitley and Hugh L. Whitley operated the funeral after their father’s death in 1910.
The record book offers a variety of unique data, documenting the years 1923-1925. In addition to the products and pricing of funeral items, such as caskets, burial clothes, embalming fluid, and cemetery transportation, the ledger also social and demographic information about the deceased. Including everything from family relations and presiding clergy to cause of death and grave location, this resource could be a wealth of information for genealogists or historical researchers.
At the links below, you can view all the new additions to DigitalNC from the New Bern-Craven County Public Library, including the multiple impressive sources from the Female Benevolent Society of New Bern:
To access more resources and manuscript items like this, please visit the North Carolina Memory Collection. To learn more about the New Bern-Craven County Public Library, please visit their contributor page or check out the website.
The 5 scrapbooks feature newspaper clippings that, together, cover nearly a century of history of the McDowell County School System. They document the schools, students, administrators, and events in the area. Mary Margaret Greenlee (1892-1965) and her relatives complied the scrapbooks. Greenlee was a well-known educator and advocate of historical preservation in McDowell, Iredell, and Catawba counties.
These scrapbooks, which are full text searchable using Optical Character Recognition (OCR), are excellent resources for those interested in genealogical or historical research in McDowell County. They would be useful for studying change over time in the education system in North Carolina.
You can view each other digitized scrapbooks at the links below:
The unique items from the Lions Club feature several members from their early activities with the club and follows them through leadership roles within the wider national organization. These items could be very useful for those interested in studying the history of Albemarle during the mid- to late twentieth century as the scrapbooks contain many newspaper clippings documenting the Lions’ activities in the area.
In addition, five more yearbooks from Albemarle Senior High School are now available. DigitalNC has published 20 yearbooks from this school. They date from as early as 1927 and document many changes in fashion, culture, and education over the decades.
You can view all of the recently digitized yearbooks from Albemarle High School below:
The Montgomery County Public Library recently provided the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center with a wide variety of materials to digitize and publish on DigitalNC. Coming directly from the library is a photo album from the 1980s depicting the library’s various activities and programs, including arts and crafts, a quiz bowl, summer reading programs, and a library luncheon.
Summer reading program– “Book a Trip to Africa”
In our Images of North Carolina collection, we also recently added a few maps and blueprints of various areas of interest around Montgomery County, pictures related to prominent members of the community, and four photographs from Candor School of Miss Elizabeth Currie and her fellow faculty members and pupils. In the North Carolina Memory Collection there are two more items related to Miss Currie: a music recital program and a piano recital program. Also from a school in Montgomery County are two play programs put on by a class in Troy Elementary.
Survey map for a land dispute between Matilda Owens and Elijah Needham
Jewel Callicutt and friends outside of one of her greenhouses
A number of election returns from Montgomery County in the 1880s were included, and they show how the districts in Montgomery voted on such matters at what to do about public debt and who to elect for president, representation, and state officials.
Election returns from Montgomery County for State Officials
Finally, the Montgomery County Public Library provided issues from the 1960s of The Smoke Signal (West Montgomery High School’s student newspaper), two funeral programs (for Othar C. Hunsucker and Juanita Auman Wallace) and some newspaper clippings about the town of Troy winning the Sandhills Area Development Association’s community development contest. For more information about the Montgomery County Public library and their materials, visit their contributor page on DigitalNC, the library’s website, or see these previous blog posts from DigitalNC.
Two ledgers and one document of a financial transaction from the Stanly County Museum have now been added to the North Carolina Memory collection of DigitalNC.
The first ledger shows transactions kept by William Henry Wall (1888-1967), a respected Stanly County resident and son of former enslaved people. Of especial interest is a sketched out plan on pages 5-6 for Kingville, an African-American community in Albemarle. A number of the names in this ledger also appear in the papers of the Dr. Francis Joseph Kron Collection.
The second ledger comes from the Stanly County Home, and it documents the inmates at the home between the years 1919 to 1955, including the inmate’s name, reason for being admitted into the home, and dates of release or death, in which case cause of death was recorded.
Page from the Stanly County Home Inmates ledger
The document mentioned above is also associated with the Home; it is an account of the costs of some lumber that were sent to the home for construction on the porch.
Thanks to our partner, Chowan University, a new batch with six new scrapbooks are now available on DigitalNC! These scrapbooks showcase Chowan University’s 1950s sports teams, 1980s Data Processing Management Association, early years of the Center for Ethics, and student life during the 1920s and 1930s.
Viola Dana Winslow’s scrapbook provides a look into the lives of students of Chowan College in the 1920s. A majority of the photographs in this scrapbook show Viola and her friends having fun. Underneath the photographs Viola writes descriptive captions about what they are doing as well as the name of her friends and their hometowns. Additionally, she documents some of the sites, views, and buildings around campus and downtown including the science building, her church, the tea room, and the homes of some professors. More photographs from Viola’s scrapbook can be seen below!
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.
