Our partners at the Graham Historical Museum have contributed a new bound volume of 1924 maps of Burlington and the surrounding areas. These were created by the Sanborn Insurance Company, which produced massive numbers of maps to assess buildings for fire risk from 1867 to 1970. They depict building features in great detail, sometimes even by room. Sanborn often surveyed the same places multiple times, making their maps an incredibly helpful resource for tracking changes over time in cities and specific buildings.
This latest batch depicts Burlington, North Carolina and surrounding areas of Altamahaw, Glen Raven, Bellemont, Hopedale, Elon College, Ossipee, Glencoe, and Saxapahaw. The volume contains an index of streets and significant buildings, general information on population and economic activity, and specific information pertaining to fire insurance assessment. If you are a music lover, the Saxapahaw map may be of particular interest. Like most towns in Alamance County, Saxapahaw’s economy was based on textile production and most residents worked at the cotton mill. The cotton mill closed in 1994 and was eventually converted into apartments overlooking the Haw River. The adjacent former dye house is now the Haw River Ballroom, a state of the art music venue that hosts touring acts from around the country and the world.
A deindustrialization success story, Saxapahaw has undergone transformational changes since this map was published 100 years ago. Researchers can see how it and other Alamance County communities have evolved since 1924 by viewing the map here. More digitized Sanborn maps are available on DigitalNC, as well as through UNC Libraries. See all of our collections from the Graham Historical Museum at their contributor page and learn more by visiting their website.
There are many ways to educate people about fire safety. Greensboro Fire employed the famous duo Ember and flame to do the educate a variety of people about fire safety. Ember, the Dalmatian, was born July 04, 2000 and was only 8 weeks old when she began training to be a fire safety dog. Owner and trainer, Mitzi Rice aka Flame performed in more than 3,200 shows at schools, day cares and nursing homes. Ember and Flame have both passed on, but their impact on fire safety in and around Greensboro is not forgotten.
The information about Ember and Flame is from newspaper articles included in this most recent batch of materials. You can browse through the materials to learn more about Ember, Flame and the Greensboro Fire Department.
While Ember is the star of this article, the Greensboro Fire Fighters have a plethora of photographs, newspaper clippings and other information materials such as magazine issues and safety manuals for curious researchers at Digital NC.
Featured among these documents are the magazines published alongside both the Henredon Classic and the Planters Pat Bradley International golf tournaments. These golf tournaments were hosted annually at the Willow Creek Golf Club at High Point, and attracted world famous golfers from across the country. Each magazine featured notable competitors in each tournament, alongside columns by sports journalists analyzing the game of golf at large. Some issues even include profiles on the golfers and detailed maps of the courses they would play on. Of course, each magazine is a wonderful resource for advertisement from the eighties: local businesses and furniture manufacturers hold a key presence amongst the pages.
The latest batch also included large number of church bulletins from congregations within High Point. Churches included are Wesley Memorial Methodist, Oakview United Methodist, and Washington Street Methodist. Many of the church bulletins describe the construction and design of Wesley Memorial’s new chapel, allegedly one of the last gothic churches constructed in North America. One bulletin conducts a thorough art historical analysis of the symbolic decorations of the church, detailing the allusions carved into the walls of the church: a splendid resource for anyone interested in art history or planning to visit the historic site!
Four yearbooks from T. Wingate Andrews High School and High Point Central High School were also included in the batch, with all books covering the early 1970s at the schools.
If we’ve piqued your interest, you can investigate all of our brand new documents here. Interested in learning more about High Point history? View more documents on our website here, or visit High Point Museum’s website here.
Thanks to our partners at Edgecombe County Memorial Library, we are pleased to announce DigitalNC now has over two hundred new records to explore! Pore over records from Tarboro’s history of shipping and manufacturing, read through decades of magazine club programs, or get inspired by dozens of new recipes! This new batch covers a truly dazzling array of subjects, from as far back as 1878 to as recent as 2022. They include correspondences, legal ledgers, and even uniforms! Whatever your historical interest, this collection likely has something for you.
Locals from or around Tarboro will be pleased to find a great quantity of photographs, publications, and records relating to downtown Tarboro’s historic structures. Historians have taken painstaking efforts over the years to preserve the history of this beautiful town, and the fruits of their labor are now easily seen. Many storefronts, churches, and civic buildings have carefully curated profiles, containing detailed photographs, preserved newspaper clippings, and written histories. Perhaps the most detailed of these profiles is Tarboro’s old town hall building, which served as a fixture of community politics before it was demolished in the late-twentieth century. The destruction of the building is detailed in full, even including detailed photographs of its demolition!
Readers interested in women’s history will be elated to discover over a century’s worth of documents related to the Tarboro Magazine Club, a collective of women dedicated to intellectual growth and community. The Magazine Club has graciously provided decades of correspondences between members, detailed lists of membership records, and magazine subscription lists. A vast number of programs are also included, which list the annual theme of the club alongside a schedule of lectures and talks given by members of the Magazine Club. Educational “learn-at-home” courses were also used by the club, and even include materials from UNC Chapel Hill!
Locals may also fondly remember DeBerry’s Colonial Dining Room, a traditional southern kitchen that served the community for years before its unfortunate closing. Fortunately, our collection now includes a host of photographs, postcards, and menus from the dining room. We even have detailed photographs of the famous uniforms worn by the waitresses! Perhaps most tantalizing of all is the inclusion of over one hundred recipes carefully recorded by Ruby DeBerry, the matriarch of the restaurant. The recipes are an absolute gem, reflecting mid-century southern cuisine in a new way. Miss a dish? Now you can recreate it at home!
Hungry for more? You can find this collection (and more) here. Want to know more about Tarboro? Contact our partners at Edgecombe Memorial Library at their website here. Want to test some recipes? Let us know how they turn out!
We at NCDHC are excited to announce our latest batch of materials contributed by Braswell Memorial Library in Rocky Mount, N.C. This addition is mainly comprised of booklets from the Virginia Dare Book Club dating from 1934 to 1969. Booklets include lists of members and officers as well as scheduled events for the year. Many of these booklets are crafted into shapes including roses, butterflies, and the outline of North Carolina, showcasing members’ artistic talent and dedication to the club.
This collection also includes ten years of Bailey High School student newspapers from 1925-1935. Additionally, we have uploaded 1924-1929 commencement programs and a 1949 Future Farmers of America newsletter from Bailey High School, additional yearbooks for Spring Hope and Southern Nash High Schools, as well as a list of rules and regulations from the Wesley Privette Memorial Library in Bailey, N.C. See these records and all of our digitized materials from Braswell Memorial Library here.
Thanks to our partner, Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, a batch of audiovisual materials are now available on DigitalNC! The materials primarily highlight the accomplishments of and programs at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College. This includes one video that features the Live Model Competition and Fall 1999 RCCC Cosmetology Long Hair Mannequin Competition. In these competitions, cosmetology students at RCCC create day and/or evening looks which are then judged and ranked. The images below show some of the amazing talent and creativity of the RCCC cosmetology students!
In collaboration with our partners at Wilkes Community College, 50 new recordings, which make up hours of audio history, are now available online! These records, previously carefully maintained on reel-to-reel tape, can now be listened to anywhere, anytime. The recordings, which include several fascinating oral histories, stretch as far back as 1953 and extend to 1980.
Many of these recordings are oral histories, where a longtime local of Wilkes County recounts their lived experience in relation to the area. Interviewers, often in collaboration with Wilkes Community College, would visit the homes of longtime locals and candidly record their stories. Because of this candid nature, some recordings include the natural ambience of birdsong, rustling leaves, or chairs moving — all of which make the listener feel closer and more present to the speaker. These speakers (born as early as 1861!) speak on a variety of subjects relating to life in Wilkes County: topics include Camp Jo Harris, the life of an optometrist, and books read (and enjoyed) by former North Carolina Poet Laureate James Larkin Pearson. Many reflect on the lumber and furniture industry which rose to prominence in the area during the early twentieth century. The opinions and subjects are as varied as the memories and lives of the speakers, which paint a colorful picture of Wilkes County’s past.
If you’re interested in learning even more about the history of the area, you’re in luck! Included in this collection are a series of forums held during the 1970s, which focus on Wilkes County’s previous centuries of histories. Though you may not find much contemporary history in these recordings, its fascinating (and perhaps recursive) to hear historical discussions of history. Several of these forums were held at local high schools, and include discussions between local historians and high school students. The candid recordings often pick up teachers hushing side conversations between students; a nice reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Besides oral histories, some recordings contain previous radio broadcasts from local stations. These broadcasts often contain advertisements for local businesses, and are about news relevant to the Wilkes County area. A particular standout is a program broadcast by the Lincoln Heights choir, where schoolchildren urge voters to support a bond that would finance underrepresented schools. The program is scored by classical piano music and includes a concert by the school choir, and is just an overall beautiful listen.
You can listen to that broadcast here, or find more of Wilkes County’s history on NC Digital here. Find out more about our partners at Wilkes Community College at their website here.
Thanks to our partner, the Museum of the Albemarle, several batches of materials are now available on DigitalNC! The first batch adds several new titles and issues of older Elizabeth City, N.C. newspapers spanning from the 1800s to 1900s.
The second batch of materials contains two magazines and several newspaper clippings highlighting notable Elizabeth City news. Two of the newspaper clippings present in this batch, one from 1902 and the other 1941, directly deal with the infamous Ella Maude “Nell” Cropsey murder in Elizabeth City. The details of the case are provided below using newspaper articles from this batch along with others in our newspaper collection.
According to Ollie Cropsey, her sister Nell Cropsey and James “Jim” Wilcox met in June 1898, just two months after the family moved to Elizabeth City. In the early days, James would come over to see Nell every Sunday and eventually started to come over almost every afternoon. During their time together the two would go on walks, rides, sail, and see shows. However, in the fall of 1901 the two started getting into arguments and spats. After a period of silence and the arrival of Ollie and Nell’s cousin Carrie, the two began speaking again. The night Nell went missing from her family’s waterfront home in Elizabeth City, she was socializing with her visiting cousin Carrie, sister Ollie, LeRoy Crawford, and James Wilcox.
That evening, on November 20, 1901, around 11:10PM, Nell escorted Wilcox presumptively out of the house. About 15 minutes later, Crawford left as well. After the departure of Crawford, Ollie closed the door and windows and went to the bedroom she shared with her sister. She was surprised to find that her sister was not yet in their room, but figured she was either still talking with Wilcox outside or in the dining room and either went to sleep or stayed awake until 12:30AM depending on which newspaper issue you read. Whether she went to sleep or stayed awake, a commotion on the property had Mr. Cropsey getting his gun to defend his pigs. At that point, Ollie told her father to not shoot as James and Nell were potentially in the yard. Not finding Nell in the near vicinity, they began to search for her. Still unable to find her, the family enlisted the help of the community the following day. The search came to an end on December 27th when her body was found close to her home on the surface of the Pasquotank River. Wilcox was found guilty of second degree murder in 1902 and sentenced to 30 years.
According to the newspaper clipping from the March 13, 1941 issue of The Daily Advance, Wilcox’s father—former sheriff of Pasquotank County, Thomas Wilcox—tried several times to have him pardoned on petitions. The pardons were denied by governors two separate times supposedly as a result of Wilcox’s attitude during the search for Nell and towards the Cropsey family during the trial. In 1918, however, Wilcox was pardoned by Governor Thomas Bickett after writing the governor a “humble letter […] declaring innocence.”
The North Carolina Digital Heritage Center is pleased to announce that new materials from our generous partners at North Carolina Central University are now available for viewing and research purposes on DigitalNC! The materials consist of publications from historically Black Churches in and around Raleigh, Durham, Henderson and Oxford North Carolina, a handmade scrapbook consisting of newspaper clippings detailing Black law enforcement officers and agents in Durham and educational materials pertaining to The North Carolina Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers, Inc and the North Carolina Teachers Association. These materials give insight into Black life in the region.
The North Carolina Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers, Inc was founded in 1927 with the mission to improve student attendance rates, promote the overall health of students, lengthen the school year (NCpedia). Additionally local chapters raised money to buy land for schools, beautify campus grounds and to purchase musical instruments and other supplemental educational materials (NCpedia). In the 1950’s and 60’s local units garnered the support of radio and V ads along with a membership of over 300,000 participants to meet financial goals (NCpedia). The materials we have from the North Carolina Congress of Colored Parents and Teacher’s, Inc. are from the mid to late 1960’s. During this time education was still racially segregated by law. However, in 1969 the organization merged with it’s white counterparts and became known as the North Carolina Parent-Teacher’s Association. History of the north Carolina Congress of Colored Parents and Teachers Inc. was gathered from NCpedia.
We have publications for the North Carolina Teachers Association as well. The North Carolina Teachers Association serve African American educators across the state of North Carolina. The organization originated as early as 1881. Educators from across the state would meet annually at various schools for networking and skill sharing sessions. The organization eventually merged with its white counterparts in 1970 when racial segregation ended (NCpedia). We have the a special edition souvenir program from 1970 honoring Mrs. Ruth Braswell Jones, who served as president from 1968-1970. The bulk of materials we have for the North Carolina Teachers Association are standard publications called the Teachers Record that document notable events and accomplishments of Black educators in North Carolina along with their annual conventions. The history of North Carolina Teachers Association was gathered from NCpedia.
You can also browse through materials from historically black churches in and around the region.
We are excited to welcome a new partner and announce our first batch of materials from Tri-County Community College! Founded in 1964, TCCC is located in Murphy, NC in mountainous Cherokee County. The materials in this upload include over 40 course catalogs and 8 yearbooks from 1975-1985, providing researchers with a trove of information on the programs and students of TCCC from 1967 to the present day.
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.
