This week we have added issues from 35 different newspaper titles! One of the titles we have is a paper from the now non-existent town of Buffalo Springs, North Carolina. According to this News & Record article, the Harnett County town ceased to exist when the turpentine industry in the area died out. But the intriguing thing about these papers isn’t the ghost of this town, it’s the man who wrote them: John McLean Harrington. Professor and author Michael Ray Smith penned this fascinating paper about Harrington and his newspapers, in which he writes: “Shortly before the Civil War, the son of an affluent Southern family began a journalism career unlike any in his community, his state, or even the nation and produced 305 handwritten newspapers, perhaps the greatest single output of handwritten newspapers by any American journalist.” Harrington had a subscription list of roughly 100 people and would painstakingly copy each individual paper by hand, even though printing presses were widely available at the time. In 1858, when Harrington was writing issues of The Nation, he was only 19 years old. The young man’s ambitions didn’t stop with just being a journalist. He also apparently worked as a bookkeeper, surveyor, educator, sheriff, and postmaster in Harnett County. While his accomplishments were quite impressive, he was also a man of contradiction. Smith writes this of the rural Renaissance man: “He talked of a partner but never revealed the colleague’s identity—if he indeed had one. He discussed the evil of drinking but died an alcoholic. He served as a member of the Confederate militia only to swear an oath that he would always remain a loyal Unionist. Perhaps Harrington tended to do or say whatever was expedient or expected at the time. Maybe he was himself just conflicted in numerous ways.”

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 Tri-Weekly Bulletin (Charlotte, N.C.) – 1865-1881
• Asheville Pioneer (Asheville, N.C.) – 1867-1869
• Weekly Pioneer (Asheville, N.C.) – 1870-1874
• The Carolina Eagle (Hickory, N.C.) – 1871-1872
• Mountain Messenger (Jefferson, N.C.) – 1873
• Battleboro Advance (Rocky Mount, N.C.) – 1871-1873
• The Weekly Ansonian (Polkton, N.C.) – 1876-1877
• The Southern Mail (Hillsborough, N.C.) – 1880
• The Carolina Republican (Lincolnton, N.C.) – 1848-1853
• Yadkin & Catawba Journal (Salisbury, N.C.) – 1828-1833
• The Journal (Salisbury, N.C.) – 1833-1834
• The Hornet (Bixby, N.C.) – 1908
• The Courier (Asheboro, N.C.) – 1922-1924
• The Asheville Democrat (Asheville, N.C.) – 1889-1891
• Monthly Gleaner (Asheville, N.C.) – 1894-1895
• Fuller’s Gleaner (Asheville, N.C.) – 1895-1896
• The Dispatch (Bessemer City, N.C.) – 1912
• The Carthage Blade (Carthage, N.C.) – 1887-1895
• The Central Times (Dunn, N.C.) – 1895
• County Union (Dunn, N.C.) – 1895-1899
• The Transylvania Hustler (Brevard, N.C.) – 1893
• The Brevard Hustler (Brevard, N.C.) – 1896
• The Western Carolina Democrat (Bakersville, N.C.) – 1888
• Roan Mountain Republican (Bakersville, N.C.) – 1876-1879
• The Nation (Buffalo Springs, N.C.) – 1858
• Cape Fear News (Fayetteville, N.C.) – 1915-1917
• Central Argus (Hamlet, N.C.) – 1880
• The Stanly Enterprise (Albemarle, N.C.) – 1903-1907
• The Albemarle Enterprise (Albemarle, N.C.) – 1912-1916
• The Stanly News-Herald (Albemarle, N.C.) – 1920-1922
• The Beaufort News (Beaufort, N.C.) – 1920-1922
• The State Dispatch (Burlington, N.C.) – 1908-1909
• Daily Carolina Times (Charlotte, N.C.) – 1864-1869
• The Standard (Concord, N.C.) – 1900-1902
• The Battleboro Progress (Battleboro, N.C.) – 1880

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.

We’re pleased to share that you can now search more issues of the Elkin Tribune on DigitalNC, thanks to a nomination from the Elkin Public Library. The years added span 1916-1949, but the majority of the issues are from 1942-1949, with only a few scattered issues from the earlier years.

In the issues added from 1931 you’ll see a lot of coverage of the new Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital, which still operates in Elkin today. The issues from 1942-1949 cover World War II and its immediate aftermath. There are lists of individuals who served from both Surry and Yadkin counties in the May 8, 1945 issue linked at the beginning of this post. 

You can view all of the issues we’ve published from The Elkin Tribune on the newspaper’s landing page. To view all of the items we’ve worked on relating to Surry County, check out the county’s landing page.