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Stanly County High School Yearbooks Now Online

Yearbooks from eleven different Stanly County schools are now available on DigitalNC.org. They come to us from the Stanly County Museum in Albemarle.

Senior class mascots from Ridgcrest High School The Fledgling

Senior class mascots from Ridgcrest High School’s The Fledgling, 1948.

Albemarle, N.C. Schools

  • Albemarle High School: 1941, 1949
  • Endy High School: 1952, 1955
  • Ridgecrest High School: 1948
  • Millingport High School: 1948

New London, N.C. Schools

  • New London High School: 1955
  • North Stanly High School: 1964

Norwood, N.C. Schools

Oakboro, N.C. Schools

  • West Stanly High School:  1964
  • Oakboro High School: 1950

Stanfield, N.C. School

  • Stanfield High School: 1950

The Stanly County Museum has shared a large number of items through DigitalNC. They can be viewed here.


New Kron Collection Materials Added from the Stanly County Musem

More materials from the Stanly County Museum have now been digitized and posted online at DigitalNC. Most of the material that has been added in this batch comes from the Dr. Francis Joseph Kron Collection. There are a number of papers and letters concerning the many legal battles that the Kron family were involved in, mostly concerning rights to land and contesting wills. Later letters display Dr. Kron’s frustrations with the unceasing attacks, in one declaring that North Carolina is a “vast lunatic asylum” for allowing these suits.

Letter written by Dr. Kron

Portion of a letter written by Dr. Kron

Also included in this batch are a number of miscellaneous letters from the Kron family and letters from people enslaved by the family (Elizabeth and Adele Kron, who kept the surname Kron) and a variety of legal documents including birth certificates for some of the members of the Kron family who were born in Europe, and statements of allegiance to the United States.

Kron Legal Documents

Pledge of allegiance to the United States, signed by Dr. Kron

For more information on the Dr. Francis Joseph Kron Collection, see the exhibit website, or this previous blog post.

Unrelated to the Kron papers but also provided by Stanly County Museum are three panoramic photographs. Two of these photographs feature factory workers. The third is a photo that was taken at the 1912 Young Women’s Christian Association Conference, and it includes representatives from a number of women’s colleges.

YWCA Conference

YWCA Conference

All of the Stanly County Museum materials available on DigitalNC can be viewed here.

 


New Stanly County Ledgers Now Available Online

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.

Wall Brothers ledger, Map of Kingville Community

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.

Image

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.

You can view all of Stanly County Museum’s materials on DigitalNC.


Large Aerial Photographs, Manuscripts and School Materials from Stanly County Online

Stanly County Common School Register Excerpt

Excerpt from the Common School Register, September, 1860. The instructor closed the school during fair weather to “pull fodder.” Later that month, attendance decreased to “a very few in number.”

Perhaps you saw our recent tweet showing students holding a large bound volume of aerial photographs? This volume was one of two that were included in a recent batch of items digitized for the Stanly County Museum.

Other items in this batch include a group of indentures from 1795 – 1886. These are some of the oldest items on our site. Common surnames in the indentures include Blackwelder, Ridenhour, and Lyerly.

The final two items from this batch are the Stanly County North Carolina Common School Register (1838-1863) and the Albemarle School District Census (1906). The latter includes students’ names, ages, and whether they were male or female, and what we believe are parents’ names. The former includes a bit more detail, including attendance records, grades, and the occupations of parents. Down the right hand pages are notes from the teacher that are a diary of sorts, describing school activities, visitors, the weather, as well as an expulsion and several deaths. Also, be sure to take a look at the school rules, enumerated on page 7. No whooping or hallowing!

View all of the materials on DigitalNC from the Stanly County Museum.


Stanly County Scrapbooks, Ledgers, Postcards, and Civil War Letters Now Online

The North Carolina Digital Heritage Center recently digitized a variety of materials from the Stanly County Museum in Albemarle, N.C. Prominent in the materials is information on the Jones family.

The Jones Family Materials

Brothers James Read Jones, left, and Will Jones (circa 1861-1862). Their letters, among others, comprise the Jones Family Letter Collection from the Stanly County Museum.

Brothers James Read Jones, left, and Will Jones (circa 1861-1862). Both were soldiers from Indiana in the Union army. Their letters, among others, comprise the Jones Family Letter Collection from the Stanly County Museum.

The  Jones Family Letter Collection was donated to the Stanly County Museum by Janice H. Mitchener. The letters, which number in the hundreds, are correspondence between James Read Jones, his wife Achsah Gilbert Pleas Jones, and various friends and other members of their family. The complete, numbered letters appear first in the collection (Letters 1-169), followed by incomplete letters (Loose 1-51). Biographical information about the Jones family is at the end of the letter collection (Documents 1-5). The numbered letters are roughly grouped–first are James Read Jones’s letters, and then Achsah Gilbert Pleas Jones’s letters (for a chronology, see Document 5).

The correspondence tracks many threads: the couple’s relationship, from infancy to past marriage, and the life and death in 1862 of Will Jones, James Read Jones’s brother. Though the letters date from January 1861 to April 1894, the bulk of the letters date from 1861-1862, when James and his brother served in the Union army. As Documents 2-4 detail, Sergeant J. R. Jones was mustered into Company E, 36th Regiment of the Indiana Infantry, in September 1861. He met Achsah Gilbert Pleas and on April 7, 1862, just after the Battle of Shiloh, they were married. Sgt. Jones was promoted to Second Lieutenant in March 1862 but discharged for an inguinal hernia on December 2, 1862. He then spent much of his life traveling the world as a Quaker minister, while Achsah raised their children in North Carolina. Achsah and Jimmy were married until Achsah’s death in 1898.

The Jones Family materials also includes a scrapbook. The James Read Jones Scrapbook of Writings is a collection of letters and newspaper clippings by or about James Read Jones. Dated materials in the collection range from 1885-1911. The scrapbook includes many newspaper columns and articles written by J. R. Jones, as well as assorted correspondence, photographs, and poems.

School newspapers

Also new are newspapers from two Albemarle schools. There are two late 1930s issues of The Seven Stars newspaper from Albemarle Central Elementary School, and several volumes of The Full Moon newspaper from Albemarle High School:

  • Volume 11, numbers 3-4 (December 14, 1934 – February 14, 1935)
  • Volume 12, numbers 1-6 (October 18, 1935 – May 15, 1936)
  • Volumes 24-33 (October 3, 1958 – May 24, 1967)
  • Volumes 56-63 (September 1990 – June 1998)

Other new materials include:


Ledgers and Other Items now Online from Montgomery and Stanly Counties

The Stanly County Museum and Montgomery County Public Library recently asked us to add some items they digitized to DigitalNC. There are a range of items, from late 18th century business documents in the Forrest Family Manuscript Collection to ledgers from stores in Montgomery County, to this striking panoramic photograph of Lillian Mill.

Lillian Mill Panoramic Photograph

Here’s a list of the other items. You can also view everything from Stanly County Museum or Montgomery County Public Library.

Fairview Memorial Park Brochure
Forrest Family Manuscript Collection
Norwood Elementary School Signature Book of Ronnie Melton

Images
East Main Street, Albemarle, NC
Farmers and Planters Hotel, South Third Street, Albemarle, NC
John Odom Ross
Panoramic View of Lillian Mill and Group Portrait
Stanly County Public Library
Sid Austin House
Miller Family Bible Page

Ledgers
John B. and H. Martin’s Rocky Springs Store Ledger or Day Book
Blacksmith’s Ledger
Ledger of a Store on the Little River, Montgomery County, NC [1829-1830]
Ledger of a Store on the Little River, Montgomery County, NC [1831-1838]
Stanly County School Ledger for District 47


Historic Photos, Scrapbooks, and More from Stanly County Now Available on DigitalNC

A fascinating group of materials from the collections of the Stanly County Museum in Albemarle is now available on DigitalNC. The newly-digitized content includes:

Visit the Stanly County Museum website to learn more about the history of Stanly County and its people.


West Badin High School Yearbooks Now Available

Thanks to our partner, Stanly County Museum, two batches containing West Badin High School yearbooks for the years 1955-1959 and 1962-1966 are now available on our website here and here. West Badin served the students in the Black community of Badin, NC until integration in the late 1960s.  

West Badin Administration Building. Text under the photograph reads: "The Blue Devil. Presented by the Senior Class 1959. West Badin High School Badin, North Carolina."

To learn more about the Stanly County Museum, please visit their website.

For more 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.


New Digital Exhibit: The Dr. Francis Joseph Kron Collection

New materials have been added to the Dr. Francis Joseph Kron Collection, a rich manuscript collection from the Stanly County Museum. Most of the documents pertain to people enslaved by Dr. Kron’s daughters, although he himself is mentioned in a few of them.

tax receipt

Tax receipt of James Kron, 1869

One of the batches of documents contains tax record receipts. Many of these receipts show the amount of state, county, and poll taxes paid. The other batches, one covering the years between 1855 and 1889, the other from the years 1869 to 1905, are primarily financial documents, although there are some letters of correspondence between family members. There are a number of interesting documents in these collections that lay out the terms of sharecropping agreements.

Kron Sharecropping Agreement

Detail of signatures on a sharecropping contract between James Kron & Lewis Brutton.

Dr. Francis Joseph Kron was a resident of Montgomery County, and he owned sizable amounts of land both there and in Stanly County. He had a variety of interests and in the course of his life he was a teacher, physician, plantation owner, and horticulturalist. For more information about Dr. Kron, visit the Stanly County Museum’s website. There are more papers from Dr. Kron available on DigitalNC’s website, as well as in the Southern Historical Collection in Wilson Library at UNC-Chapel Hill.


Badin, North Carolina: The Town that Aluminum Built

Screen Shot 2013-11-25 at 10.16.10 AMWe’ve recently completed digitization of issues of the Badin Bulletin from 1918-1920, from the collections of the Stanly County Museum, which give a interesting glimpse into life in a factory town in the early 20th century.

The town of Badin was formed in 1913 by a French aluminum company to house workers for a large plant being built on Yadkin-Pee Dee River. The outbreak of World War I derailed the French effort and the plant was purchased by the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). Although the town retained some of its original French influence, the collection of small houses grouped near the factory resembled the textile mill villages that were then prevalent throughout Piedmont North Carolina.

When the United States entered the World War, local demand for aluminum was high. As the factory expanded, so did the town. The Badin Bulletin documents civic and social life in the community from 1918-1920. It’s definitely a company paper — there are no stories about labor unrest or worker dissatisfaction — but it still provides an interesting look at the lives and activities of the workers. Much of the paper is devoted to news of the employees and their families, especially marriages, births, and deaths. There is a lengthy social column noting the visits and illnesses among the community and most issues are interspersed with patriotic articles and features about the factory itself.

Screen Shot 2013-11-25 at 10.12.38 AMMost issues also include news from the local African American community. Like much of the South during this time, Badin was strictly segregated by race. The editors of the Badin Bulletin presented stories about the local “Colored Village” as if it were a source of pride for the company. Several issues include photos of houses and public buildings in the African American section. This may have been part of an effort to attract more African American workers to the factory.

Badin remained a small community closely tied to the aluminum plant until 2010, when Alcoa announced that the factory would be closed and the property redeveloped for future industrial use. Badin celebrated its Centennial earlier this year.


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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.

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