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Transylvania County Courthouse, Letter from the NC Department of Cultural Resources
Duckworth Mill Data Sheet
The nearly 500 objects in Transylvania County Library‘s architectural survey have been updated with more detailed information and are now available on DigitalNC.
Lydia Morrow Raines House
Added over the summer of 2016, the Architectural History of a Mountain County exhibit contains nearly 1500 photographs of structures in the county, including homes, farms, cemeteries, churches, and businesses. This update adds even more information, such as maps, data sheets, historical building registrations, newspaper articles, and official communications between the State of North Carolina and property owners.
These documents add context and usability to the photographs. The hand drawn maps, property records, and legal documents build a model of Transylvania County through documents. These could be excellent resources for genealogists interested in family and property records of those from Brevard, Cedar Mountain, Rosman, Lake Toxaway, and Pisgah Forest communities. Most objects include a data sheet with the official survey records, a write up about the property, a hand drawn map, and notes.
To learn more about Transylvania County Library, please visit the contributor page or the website. To see more images of historic North Carolina, please visit the Images of North Carolina Collection.
DigitalNC has a new exhibit focused on North Carolina architecture, courtesy of our partner, the Transylvania County Library.
This new exhibit contains nearly 1500 images, added to the Images of North Carolina Collection.
The exhibit, Transylvania: The Architectural History of a Mountain County, features nearly 1,500 images taken during an architectural survey done of the county in the early 1990s. Architectural surveys are inventories of built, intact structures in a given area. These images document structures and communities in Brevard, Rosman, Lake Toxaway, Cedar Mountain, Pisgah Forest, and other areas. The County was founded in 1861 as an agricultural community, which is evident through the survey. Hundreds of images depict homes, barns, spring houses, smokehouses, chicken houses, silos, and many other structures that reflect the activities and roots of the rural community.
In addition to farms, the survey also documents churches, cemeteries, local businesses, and schools, some of which have since been demolished. These resources include corresponding data that describe locations, family names, and historical information that could serve as excellent resources for genealogists or researchers.
To view more images of architecture in North Carolina, check out the Images of North Carolina Collection or the Rockingham County Legacy Exhibit, which also contains an architectural survey.
To learn more about the Transylvania County Library, please visit the contributor page or the website.
Over 240 images of railways and the logging industry in Transylvania County can now be found on DigitalNC. This group of photographs, digitized and submitted by the Transylvania County Library, date from the early 20th century on.
These images show logging and tannin operations in Rosman, Brevard, Lake Toxaway and Quebec, which all border on or lie within the Pisgah National Forest. Featured prominently are the trains, necessary to transport lumber, workers, and logs throughout the area. Sawmills, rail cars loaded with lumber, oxen pulling logs near work camps, and steam-powered machinery are in many of the photos, as well as group portraits of lumber and tannery workers.
More than 500 photographs contributed by Transylvania County Library have been added to the Images of North Carolina collection on DigitalNC. Many of these images center upon school life in Transylvania County, from rural schools of the early twentieth century to Rosman High School, Brevard High School, and Brevard College. These photographs complement earlier contributions of photographs by Transylvania County Library that feature scenes of community life.
Quebec School Number One, before school taxes.
Lakeside School (also known as Hogback Valley or Pea Ridge).
Rosman High School cheerleading, February 2, 1954.
Brevard High School, Most Original Robert Hunter and Carolyn Kizer, 1947.
Brevard College, Clarion Loyalty Campaign.
Here’s a nice photo, from the Transylvania County Library, of the City Market in Brevard, probably in the early 20th century.
A closer look reveals that those cows should be pretty nervous.
These photos, from the Transylvania County Library, are both labeled “Driverless Car Parade, 1937.” What in the world is a driverless car parade? The cars, as far as I can tell, have drivers. Any ideas?
This year marks the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center’s 10th anniversary, and to celebrate we’ll be posting 10 stories from 10 stakeholders about how NCDHC has impacted their organizations.
Today’s 10 for 10 Q&A is from Marcy Thompson, Librarian in the Local History Room at Transylvania County Library. Since 2010, we’ve partnered with Transylvania County Library (Library home page | NCDHC contributor page) digitizing scrapbooks, newspapers, photos, architectural histories, and more. Over the last few years, Marcy has expanded relationships in communities throughout Transylvania County in order to document community groups. Read below for more about our partnership with Transylvania County Library.
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The Local History Room at the Transylvania County Library serves as the archives for Transylvania County. We are charged with collecting and preserving materials pertaining to Transylvania families, businesses, organizations and history including documents, photographs, manuscripts, newspapers, scrapbooks and more. The Local History Room is staffed by one full-time position responsible for the service desk, a small part-time staff and a team of volunteers, along with outreach and programming. By working with the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center we have been able to make materials accessible online through DigitalNC to people in our community and far beyond. This simply that would not have been possible without the platform, technical expertise and man-hours provided by NCDHC.
The Transylvania County Library signed an agreement with NCDHC in late 2010. Initially this was a collection of just over 200 images of downtown Brevard. The immediate benefit to our Local History Room was added publicity for the collection. Since that time we have added additional images, local newspapers, local high school yearbooks, architectural survey photos and documents, and most recently a large collection of community scrapbooks. Having all of these resources available online to the public is a huge achievement for a small rural library.
The newspaper collection, which covers 1903 through June 1940, is the material group that has had the largest impact on both library staff and users in the general public. These newspapers are available in our collection on microfilm, however they are not indexed. Through DigitalNC not only are they now available to a broader audience but they are searchable! It makes our jobs easier by being able to quickly locate information.
One example of this occurred while conducting research for a local program, display and series of articles in conjunction with the Suffrage Movement and 100th anniversary of the signing of the 19th Amendment. Rather than spending countless hours scouring microfilm we conducted searches to learn about local suffrage events, who supported and opposed suffrage, and changes brought about as a result of women gaining the right to vote.
DigitalNC has changed the way we provide service and benefited our library by opening access to resources that would otherwise be limited to only those who visit the Local History Room at the Transylvania County Library in Brevard, NC. What truly makes NCDHC great is what they make possible every day to a world of users!
This holiday season join us here on the blog for the 12 Days of NCDHC. We’ll be posting short entries that reveal something you may not know about us. You can view all of the posts together by clicking on the 12daysofncdhc tag. And, as always, chat with us if you have questions or want to work with us on something new. Happy Holidays!
Day 9: We’ll Host Items You Scan
Many of our partners have done scanning on their own. However, as we like to joke here at the NCDHC, the scanning is the easy part! It is getting those materials online for the public to view that can be really complicated. Hosting materials online is a key part of our expertise and we are happy to take any items you’ve scanned yourself and load them into DigitalNC for you. We have helped partners who have just scanned a yearbook or two, as well as partners who have embarked on large scale community projects such as DigitalKM, or who have had to migrate their digital collection from their own system, as in the case of Harnett County Public Library.
One of over 200 scrapbooks Transylvania County Library scanned themselves and sent to us to host on DigitalNC
If you are interested in sending us materials you’ve scanned yourself, we have some guidelines for how we’d like to receive it.
- All scanned images must have a minimum image quality of 300 dpi, and preferably come as TIFFs, although we will take JPEGs. There can’t be any watermarks on the images.
- We’ll need at least minimal metadata with a title and unique filename for each item. We will be happy to share a template for you to fill out to send along with the objects and can discuss any questions that arise with that template. This page on metadata requirements is also a handy guide to check.
The scanned items and their corresponding metadata can be sent via FTP, a cloud based storage site such as Dropbox or Google Drive, or you can send us an external hard drive or thumb drive. Once we receive the items, we add it to our normal queue and get them online.
Check back on Thursday as we reveal Day 10 of the 12 Days of NCDHC!
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 |
