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Variety of Person County Materials Now Available

Thanks to our partner, Person County Public Library, a batch of materials including a variety of North Carolina maps, a video of Bill Clinton’s visit to the state in 2008, pamphlets and books about North Carolina history, and more are now available on our website.

An older Black woman sits on the porch of her home.

Morse Gardner

An interesting work from this batch is the book, Let me tell you ’bout … when I was growing up. It contains transcribed interviews with older members of the Person County community which were conducted by elementary school students using tape recorders. The recordings were later transcribed and published into this book. The interviewees in this book were quite a diverse and exciting group. The interview with Morse Gardner (pictured above) being one of the most gripping. In her interview, Morse Gardner goes into great detail about her education and family, old medicinal remedies, her thoughts on segregation, and her community growing up.

To learn more about Person County Public Library, please visit their website.

To listen to oral histories available on our website, please click here.


Photographs, Ephemera, and Dortch Family Bible From Wayne County Now Online

DigitalNC is happy to announce that a new batch of 100+ photographs and ephemera from Wayne County plus selections of William T. Dortch’s personal bible are all available to view online. We would like to thank our partners at Wayne County Public Library for making this possible.

Two of the digitized photos are large photographs from around the time of World War I, depicting soldiers in Fort Bragg, N.C. and La Bazoge, France. The other photographs and ephemera in the collection speak to everyday life in mid to late 20th century Wayne County. Much of the material comes from Goldsboro High School, such as photos of cheerleaders and a resolution from the City of Goldsboro congratulating the Cougarettes on winning the state 4-A Girls’ Tennis Championship. Other photos include youth sports teams and many school portraits from New Hope School.

The portions of the personal bible of William T. Dortch contain primary information on the Dortch family tree. The fastidious documentation of marriages, births, and deaths stretches from the 18th century all the way to the turn of the 21st century.

To view all digital content from Wayne County Public Library, click here. And to learn more about the Wayne County Public Library, please visit their contributor page or website.


1830s School Workbook, 1940 Medical Diary, and Other Person County Materials Now Available

Thanks to our partner, Person County Public Library, two batches containing 1963 and 1964 Bethel Hill High School yearbooks, a 1940 medical diary, a Person County Public Library ledger, and a handmade school workbook from the 1830s is now available on our website.Pictures of two school groups (bus drivers and dramatic class). The first picture features people working on fixing a bus. The second has a group of students gathered in a classroom talking to one another.

Most interesting in this batch is the handmade school workbook from the 1830s. The workbook belonged to Thomas H. Briggs (born December 24, 1814). It contains sections on various math skills including compound multiplication, compound division, the single rule of three, inverse proportions, geometry (see how neat the geometry shapes are below!) and more. In addition to instructing the student on how to do complete problems, each section includes several problem examples.

A page dedicated to geometry problems.

Geometrical Problems

To learn more about Person County Public Library, please visit their website.

For more yearbooks from across North Carolina, visit our yearbook collection.



New Granville County Yearbooks Now Available

Thanks to our partner, Granville County Public Library, a batch containing yearbooks from Dabney High School, Henderson High School, Franklinton High School, J.F. Webb High School, and Zeb Vance High School ranging from 1938 to 1970 are now available on our website

Person standing in a doorway drinking from a glass Coke bottle with a straw. "Sophomores" is written in the top left.

 

To learn more about the Granville County Public Library, please visit their website

For more yearbooks from across North Carolina, visit our yearbook collection.


New Issues of the Person County Times Available Now

Masthead of the Person County Times.

Person County Times, August 13, 1936.

Example of Art Deco advertisement for the Person County Times.

Art Deco advertisement, January 2, 1936.

A gap in newspaper issues available from Roxboro, N.C. has now been filled thanks to our partners at Person County Public Library. Over 600 new additions of the Person County Times, spanning the years 1936 to 1943, are ready to view online.

Previously titled The Roxboro Courier and later known as The Courier-Times, the Person County Times was published every Thursday and, from April 4th, 1937 onward, every Sunday. Bringing local news to Person and adjoining counties, topics frequently reported by the newspaper include personals, society, sports, and both home and abroad political headlines.

These additions of the Person County Times also cover the majority of World War II, introducing a North Carolinian perspective to this well documented moment in history. Issues printed during the ’40s frequently advertised war bonds and defense bond stamps as well as keeping Person county informed on ongoing war trends overseas and how to assist stateside efforts.

World War II headlines in the Person County Times, including an action plan for Roxboro.

World War II headlines, December 11, 1941.

Advertisement for The Peoples Bank focusing on the new influx of women in the job market.

Advertisement highlighting the female workforce, January 31, 1943.

To learn more about Person County Public Library, visit their website, or take a look that their DigitalNC partner page. To view more of The Roxboro Courier over the years, click here.


Yearbooks Now Online, Courtesy of Burke County Public Library!

Thanks to our partner, the Burke County Public Library, editions of several yearbooks from Burke County schools are now available on our website.

The cover of the 1969 edition of Reflections, the yearbook for West Concord School.

This batch includes the 1969 edition of Reflections, the West Concord School yearbook; the 1969 edition of Belles Memoires, the Oak Hill High School yearbook; the 1969 edition of Cavalcade, the Drexel High School yearbook; the 1969 edition of Cat’s Tale, the Morganton High School yearbook; and the 1950 edition of The Impersonator, the Francis Garrou High School yearbook.

The cover of the 1950 edition of The Impersonator, the yearbook from Francis Garrou High School.

You can view all of the materials we’ve digitized for Burke County Public Library on their contributor page. For more information about the Burke County Public Library, please visit their website.


Substantial and Varied Collection from Rockingham County Now Online

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.

Morehead Cotton Mills Co.

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.

Header for the Farmer's Advocate Newsletter

“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.


19th Century Business Ledgers and Scrapbook from the Cumberland County Public Library now online at DigitalNC

Cumberland Ledger 1873

Cover of a ledger/scrapbook from the Cumberland County Public Library, 1873-1875

A trio of nineteenth-century business ledgers from the Cumberland County Public Library are now online at DigitalNC. The ledgers date from the 1830s, the 1850s, and the 1870s, respectively, and can help teach us more about the daily lives of North Carolinians during the nineteenth century. Particularly interesting is the first ledger, which dates from 1832-1834 and documents the business dealings of the merchants Womack and Goodwin in Pittsboro. Operating as general merchants, the firm served the local community with wares ranging from lace, to nails, to sugar, and everything in between.

Pittsboro Ledger 1832

Page From the Womack and Goodwin Business Ledger, 1832

The second ledger dates from 1852 to 1854 and documents the transactions of an unidentified merchant who conducted business in Cumberland County, Randolph County, and elsewhere. It includes transactions with several prominent Randolph County personalities, including Isaac Holt Faust (1818-1864), a wealthy estate owner who enslaved people, and Pinckney Davenport II (1811-1867), a local moonshine distiller. A selection of papers from the family of Foust’s daughter can be found in the Harris and Foust Family Papers, part of the Southern Historical collection at UNC’s Wilson Library.

Isaac Holt Foust Account 1853

Isaac Holt Foust Account in the 1852-1856 Ledger

The third ledger includes more account information, attributable either to one JB Hockaday or one NA Stedman Jr. of Fayetteville, and dates from 1873-1875. The first 21 pages of this ledge are pasted over with unidentified drawings and newspaper clippings, mainly consisting of prose and poetry.

For more materials from the Cumberland County Public Library, please visit their website or their contributor page here at DigitalNC.


Partners Share Their Stories: Watauga County Public Library in Boone

We are one of 29 finalists for the Institute of Museum and Library Services 2018 National Medal for Museum and Library Service. Now through April 13, IMLS is asking the people who have been impacted by the Digital Heritage Center to share their stories. If you have a story you’d like to share, we’d love to hear from you! Please contact us or share via social media by tagging us on Facebook (@NC Digital Heritage Center) or on Twitter (@ncdhc).

Today’s story comes from Ross Cooper, Adult Services and Reference Librarian at Watauga County Public Library. We’ve worked with Watauga County Public Library to digitize a wide variety of photographs from their “Historic Boone” collection. They have steadily increased their local capacity for digitization and now make collections available to a broader audience at Digital Watauga.

Close up of around 30 boys and girls of elementary school age in a group, all facing the camera

Boone Elementary School Students, 1913 (Detail), Shared by Watauga County Public Library

“As a Reference Librarian at the Watauga County Public Library in Boone, North Carolina, I was fortunate to have been present when, with the help of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center, our institution became first involved with historic preservation and digitization. A local group called Historic Boone wished to bequeath the historic images which their group had gathered, described, and cared for over several decades into the caretaking of our library, some ten years ago. Our then-County Librarian accepted the items and made a space for them. I was privileged at about the same time to attend a North Carolina Library Association annual conference presentation in which Nick Graham and Lisa Gregory of the University of North Carolina and the State Library of North Carolina presented on the ways that small public libraries and other institutions with limited resources might take some small steps towards preservation, scanning, and digitized sharing of materials within their collections which hold historical significance. This led us to a few small first attempts, including a blog-format web site with a few, piecemeal, scanned images. The offer of off-site digitization by the NC Digital Heritage Center which was additionally presented at this conference eventually led our library to transport the entire photograph archives of the Historic Boone society to the University of North Carolina to be digitized and shared online via www.digitalnc.org.

“The wide-spread community interest engendered by this undertaking and by the readily-accessible web presence was followed by the successful application by our new Regional Director for an EZ Digitization grant funded by the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). The NC Digital Heritage Center provided invaluable support, advice, and encouragement as we used this generous funding opportunity to purchase scanning and computing equipment and to fund a year-long temporary part-time position for a digitization technician. Our community was fortunate at this time to have a historian, Dr. Eric Plaag, move to our area and immediately begin actively and tirelessly working with our town, our library, and the local historical society on a number of projects involving preservation and dissemination of historical material. With his generously-volunteered expert advice, the steps which we had undertaken thanks to the NC Digital Heritage Center have now taken root and grown into a locally-based initiative, Digital Watauga, which is a cooperative venture between the Watauga County Historical Society and the Watauga County Public Library. Other local organizations, including the Junaluska Heritage Association, representing our county’s oldest historically African American community, and numerous interested individuals, have contributed to making this new and growing effort a success, on behalf of all of our area’s people. It was only through the expertise, assistance, and support of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center that any of this work ‘left the ground’! As just one small portion – perhaps the small, rugged, mountainous, Northwestern portion – of the vast array of resources which have been preserved and shared by NC Digital heritage – the strides which we have made in saving and sharing our local history are a testament to the greater work which this institution has done throughout our state, an effort which extends far beyond our local area and our state’s boundaries. I cannot highly enough express my appreciation, personally and as a community member, and I sincerely and heartily endorse the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center as a perfect exemplar of the ideas and ideals which are recognized by the IMLS National Medal for Museum and Library Service.”


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