Scrapbooks and photographs from the Durham County Library documenting the early life and career of college tennis player, Irwin Holmes, are now available at digitalnc.org. Born in Reidsville, N.C., Holmes enrolled at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C. in 1956. He graduated with a degree in engineering in 1960 and went on to work in the technology sector. The scrapbooks were put together by Holmes’ mother and include childhood photographs and memorabilia from Holmes’ tennis career.
Holmes made history as the first African American to earn an undergraduate degree from North Carolina State University as well as being the first African American athlete at the University. He excelled at tennis and joined the Wolfpack tennis team in 1958, eventually becoming co-captain. The tennis team embraced Holmes in a time when some states still prohibited African American athletes from competing with white athletes. John Kenfield, the NCSU tennis coach, would not take his team to schools that would not allow Holmes to play. Other southern colleges soon began to recruit and include more African American athletes.
Clinton W. Toms (1868-1936) graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at the age of 21 and was a school principal prior to holding the position of superintendent for Durham schools from 1894 to 1897. Known as a progressive educator and philanthropist, he revamped the administration and arrangement of the graded school and helped to found the Durham Public Library in 1896. He introduced a compulsory manual training course to the curriculum and also reorganized the high school curriculum into subject departments. His efforts to secure funds to provide classroom materials brought him in contact with the Duke family. In 1897, he left the field of education to join the American Tobacco Company. This scrapbook documents Durham’s education system during Toms’ service as superintendent, primarily through newspaper clippings. Also included are school exercises, correspondence, and printed material.
The Toms Scrapbook is shared online by the Durham County Library.
The following newspapers were digitized from microfilm in 2013.
The North Carolina City Directories collection in DigitalNC continues to grow. There are now more than 900 directories online, spanning more than a century. Published from early 1860s to the early 1960s, the directories cover cities and towns across North Carolina. There are 107 cities and 63 counties represented in the online collection. Most of the directories that were digitized come from the North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill, though several other libraries have contributed copies, including the Durham County Library, Duke University, the Forsyth County Public Library, and the Hickory Public Library.
We are making an effort to include every available North Carolina city directory published through 1963 (later editions have a different copyright status). If you know of city directories in North Carolina libraries that are not included on this site, please let us know.
The following newspapers were digitized from microfilm in 2011 and 2012.
Title |
Years |
Nominating Institution |
The Mebane Leader |
1911-1915 |
Alamance County Public Library |
Highland Messenger (Asheville) |
1840-1851 |
Buncombe County Public Library |
The Standard (Concord) |
1888-1898 |
Cabarrus County Public Library |
Daily Concord Standard |
1895-1899 |
Cabarrus County Public Library |
Mecklenburg Jeffersonian (Charlotte) |
1841-1849 |
Charlotte Mecklenburg Library |
Miners’ and Farmers’ Journal (Charlotte) |
1830-1834 |
Charlotte Mecklenburg Library |
Catawba Journal (Charlotte) |
1824-1828 |
Charlotte Mecklenburg Library |
Western Democrat (Charlotte) |
1856-1868 |
Charlotte Mecklenburg Library |
North Carolina Whig (Charlotte) |
1852-1863 |
Charlotte Mecklenburg Library |
Fayetteville Observer |
1851-1865 |
Cumberland County Public Library |
The Carolina Times (Durham) |
1951-1964 |
Durham County Library |
The Lincoln Republican (Lincolnton) |
1840-1842 |
Gaston County Public Library |
The Lincoln Courier (Lincolnton) |
1845-1895 |
Gaston County Public Library |
The Roanoke News (Weldon) |
1878-1922 |
Halifax County Public Library |
The Marion Progress |
1916, 1929, 1940 |
McDowell County Public Library |
Marion Record |
1894-1895 |
McDowell County Public Library |
Marion Messenger |
1896-1898 |
McDowell County Public Library |
The Pilot (Southern Pines) |
1920-1945 |
Southern Pines Public Library |
Sylvan Valley News |
1900-1911 |
Transylvania County Library |
The Pinehurst Outlook |
1897-1923 |
The Tufts Archives |
The Goldsboro Headlight |
1887-1903 |
Wayne County Public Library |
The Elm City Elevator |
1902 |
Wilson County Public Library |
The Wilson Advance |
1874-1899 |
Wilson County Public Library |
Early issues of The Carolina Times, from 1937 through 1950, are now available on DigitalNC.org. The Carolina Times, edited by Louis Austin from 1927 to 1971, is a paper of national significance. Targeted primarily to the African American community in Durham, the Times covered the long struggle for equal rights for all Americans. The newspaper’s motto is “The Truth Unbridled,” an accurate description of Austin’s honest and forthright depiction of racial injustice in North Carolina and beyond.
The Carolina Times was digitized from microfilm held by the Durham County Library. The North Carolina Collection at the Durham County Library documents the history of our state, with a special emphasis on Durham.
Gladstein’s Men’s Shop at 209 N. Magnum Street
Gladstein’s men’s clothing shop, formerly located at 209 W. Mangum Street, was owned and operated for many years by the Gladstein family of Durham, N.C. According to a recent article from the Herald Sun, Gladstein’s used to be THE place to buy Levi’s blue jeans. If the mural in this photograph from the Durham Urban Renewal Records project is to be trusted, you could get your Lee’s there as well. The building was demolished during the 1970s, and the spot where it stood is now a parking lot.
The stories of some members of the Gladstein family, who came to Durham from New York through an association with tobacco magnate Buck Duke, are told in a new publication from UNC Press, Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina by Leonard Rogoff, as well as a corresponding exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of History.
The Durham Urban Renewal Records collection is shared online by the Durham County Library.
New issues from thirteen newspaper titles have been added to DigitalNC, thanks to The North Carolina Collection at UNC Chapel Hill. These date from the late 19th century and fill in gaps in our digital newspaper collections. Issues from Our Home, The Daily Record, The Morning Herald, and The Western Herald are the first of these titles on the site.
Below is a list of titles, their cities of publication, and the years from which the issues date.
- Henderson Gold Leaf (Henderson, N.C.) – May 25, 1899
- The Wilmington Messenger (Wilmington, N.C.) – Nov. 18, 1898
- The Home Rule (Raleigh, N.C.) – Oct. 20, 1898
- The Western Herald (Jefferson, N.C.) – June 20, 1899
- The Morning Herald (Durham, N.C.) – Feb. 6, 1898, Sept. 18, 1898, Oct. 2, 1898, and Feb. 12, 1899
- The Lincoln Journal (Lincolnton, N.C.) – Aug. 26, 1898
- The Milton Herald (Milton, N.C.) – Feb. 3, 1898
- The Daily Record (Greensboro, N.C.) – Feb. 15, 1898, May 4, 1898, and June 8, 1898
- Salisbury Daily Sun (Salisbury, N.C.) – Aug. 10, 1898 and Dec. 28, 1899
- Our Home (Marshville, N.C.) – Aug. 16, 1898
- The Raleigh Times (Raleigh, N.C.) – May 26, 1898
- Winston-Salem Journal (Winston-Salem, N.C.) – May 25, 1898
- King’s Weekly (Greenville, N.C.) – March 24, 1899
Search or browse all of our newspapers here.
Thanks to our partner, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, new issues from five North Carolina newspapers are available on our website. These include:
There are also new issues of Oxford Public Ledger, courtesy of our partner Granville County Public Library, and The Yadkin Ripple, thanks to Yadkin County Public Library.
To browse all of our newspapers by location, date, and type, take a look at our North Carolina Newspapers collection.
This week we have another 30 newspaper titles up on DigitalNC! In the September 3, 1891 issue of Boone’s Watauga Democrat we have an article describing the terrible train wreck of Bostian’s Bridge in Statesville. This fatal accident sparked a legendary North Carolina ghost story, but perhaps even scarier are the boogeymen railroad companies would often create to avoid accountability: train wreckers.
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Watauga Democrat, September 3, 1891
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News and Observer, July 7, 1898
By 1891 the railroad system in America had exploded, allowing for easier cross-country travel and bringing with it fresh new paranoia about disasters and scary strangers coming to your town. Blaming a wreck on some shady character was a lot easier than paying a fortune on settlements due to negligence. Almost immediately after the August 27, 1891 accident, the Richmond & Danville Railroad Company put out ads offering a $10,000 reward for the apprehension of the perpetrator, leading to many being accused and arrested (conveniently with the help of a railroad detective).
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News & Observer, September 4, 1891
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Greensboro Workman, September 16, 1891
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Asheville Citizen, October 15, 1891
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Wilmington Messenger, February 3, 1892
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News & Observer, August 29, 1897
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Durham Daily Globe, September 26, 1891
The editor at Statesville’s Landmark provides us with an incredibly detailed account of the accident and the recovery effort, complete with interviews from survivors and witnesses where they describe rotten cross-ties and rail workers throwing this evidence into the creek below the bridge. Many of those interviewed make a point to mention that there were no signs of robbery after the crash, which doesn’t exactly support the idea of this being some dastardly deed by a bandit.
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:
Asheville
Boone
Burlington
Chapel Hill
Durham
Fayetteville
Fairfield
Gastonia
Holly Springs
Jackson
Kinston
Lexington
Lincolnton
Pittsboro
Raleigh
Salisbury
Tarboro
Winston
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.