Celebrating Births!
When James Earl Dillard was born January 7, 1911 in Caswell County, NC , his father, James Edgar Dillard caused some upward eyebrows:
Some thought Ed DILLARD was having fits the other morning. They said he went out and turned over his buggy, then climbed on top of the house and crowed like a rooster. Closer enquiring revealed that a little stranger had come to Ed’s home, and he was rejoicing. Ed lives at Corbett. — pg. 1 of the January 12, 1911 issue of the Mebane Leader newspaper of Alamance County, NC.
That’s a way to celebrate! 
This birth announcement appeared in the January 12, 1911 issue of the Mebane Leader newspaper of Alamance County, North Carolina. It is one of many articles I’ve abstracted for the NCGenWeb NC People in the Papers database. This newspaper, along with several others, have recently been added to the DigitalNC.org website to their North Carolina Newspapers collection. Full-text issues are up and can be searched or browsed so you definitely will want to check them out.
Also of interest for those seeking birth records in the state is that FamilySearch.org’s North Carolina Birth Index which spans 1800-2000. Records are from the NC State Library and while not all counties are included, it is definitely worthwhile to consult. In fact, young baby boy Dillard’s birth record is included.
Gale National Library Week Offers Access to Historical Newspapers
The Gale Cengage company is offering a wonderful treat during the next two weeks. From now until April 24th, several databases will be available free of charge in celebration of National Library Week.
Several databases will be available, the one most likely to be of highest interest for most genealogy researchers is Gale News Vault becuase of its vast collection of historical newspapers. The database includes both US & UK newspapers and has more than 10 million pages available.
For North Carolina — the following newspapers and ranges are available in the 19th US Century Newspapers subset of Gale News Vault:
- News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) from 1880-1899 – close to 6,000 issues
- Raleigh Register from 1800-1899 – more than 3500 issues
- Fayetteville Observer from 1816-1899 – more than 3,000 issues
- Daily Register (Raleigh, NC) from 1850-1861 – more than 500 issues
Remember, newspapers often covered items over a wide geographic area so you’ll want to be sure to especially check for news in counties near to where the paper was published. For example, the Raleigh Register newspaper covered news from across the state — here’s an 1858 excerpt of an account on the death of Mr. George Hensley of Madison County (all the way on the other side of the state) who unfortunately met his demise due to an accidental gun discharge after a bear hunt.
Published in the Weekly Raleigh Register - Wednesday, January 27, 1858; Issue 10; col D
If you have research interests in other states, you’ll certainly wish to download the title list from the 19th Century US Newspaper collection as there are papers for many states.
To access the materials, choose from the drop down menu in the widget below. Happy Hunting!
P.S. – hat tip to my friend Billie of the TNGenWeb Project for letting me know of this!
FYI, here are some other newspaper resources:
- NC Newspapers full-text in Google News Archive
- NC Newspaper Extracts Bibliography – for print resources of newspaper abstracts
Newspaper Abstracts/Extracts Bibliography
As county coordinators, we often receive inquiries from researchers on how to find various types of information. A common request is how to locate obituaries and death information – sometimes even going back before official state and county records.
Over the years, many have taken the time to go through historical newspapers and pull out items of genealogical interest such as births, marriages & deaths. Many of our county sites have detailed information on how to locate such records, but as an additional aid, we’ve put together a bibliography of print resources to help you locate information extracted or abstracted from various newspapers in the state.
The new page is hosted on the FamilySearch Research Wiki in light of our collaboration with FamilySearch.org. The page has a purposeful emphasis on PRINT resources. When available, each book will link to the catalog record for either the Family History Library or WorldCat.org to help you find the book at other libraries.
Snapshot from the NC Newspaper Extracts Bibliography page.
To get to the list, either click on the image above or visit https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/North_Carolina_Newspaper_Extracts_Bibliography. We hope you find this consolidated list helpful. And, if you notice something missing, let us know or add it to the wiki yourself!
Historical NC Papers in Google News Archive
Google News Archive has recently implemented a new feature which makes it 10 times easier to browse through the thousands of pages of historical newspapers they a) acquired from Paper of Record and b) have been digitizing.
The new feature allows you to browse the issues & you see them in a convenient date sorted format. While I’ve been aware that there are NC newspapers digitized, until now, it’s been difficult to know exactly how many issues from each paper have been included.
North Carolina papers you’ll find in their collection are below, but note, the indicated time span does not mean every issue is included — be cognizant that there are gaps:
- Cumberland County: Fayetteville Observer — 1939-2002 (240+ issues)
- Davidson County: Times-Dispatch – 1889-2007 (14,000+ issues)
- Henderson County: Times-News – 1890-1927 (6,800+ issues)
- New Hanover County: Wilmington Star-News – 1962-2007 (almost 11,000 issues)
- Polk County: Polk County News – 1902-1926 (600+ issues)
In addition to these papers, there are papers digitized from other states around the county, as well as from other countries. I’ve compiled a list of papers I’ve found in the Archive, though the list is likely not to be complete. You can view a spreadsheet here.
Here are some aspects of Google News Archive that you’ll need to know about in order to use the site most effectively.
1) When you click on a link to view the digitized issues be sure to click the advance button if you don’t see more than one column of papers. There are gaps in the collection so even though the screen view may show 40-50 years time span, there may be a big gap in the collection.
2) You can change the view displayed by using the drop down menu in the top left corner of the screen. I personally recommend the “decade” view for a quick overview and the “year” view for finer tuning. Other views available include “month,” “week,” & “day”
250th Anniversary of Pitt County
This week, there are celebrations ongoing in Pitt County to celebrate the county’s 250th-year anniversary. As part of the festivities, the local paper, Greenville’s Daily Reflector, is featuring their new online collection of images from the newspaper — the Daily Reflector Image Collection.
This site is a spectacular resource for anyone with historical/ancestral roots to the county. It features more than 7,500 images from the paper’s photo negatives (of which there are more than 85,000). The Joyner Library at East Carolina University has for years now been building a strong digital library collection, but this just tops the cake in my book. You can download high-quality files of the image, share them via a variety of social websites, and add your own comments to the pictures if you know something about them. Some of the images here are also on Flickr and have received a great response there. The pictures cover events and people not only in Pitt county, but in surrounding counties as well.
To learn more about the project, see their About page, where you can view a SlideShare presentation about the project’s implementation. Kudos to the Joyner Library for another great resource!
NC Newspaper Digitization Project
From a fellow researcher and the NC State Archives Blog today I learned that the efforts of their newspaper digitization project is now available online. For all of you NC researchers, you MUST go check this out! Historical newspapers can offer glimpses into your ancestors’ past lives that can be extremely enlightening.
The NC project was begun in 2007 and contains papers from 1752 to the 1890s. Some of the cities with coverage represented in their database include:
- Edenton (Chowan County) – 1787-1801
- Fayetteville (Cumberland County) – 1798-1795
- Hillsboro (Orange County) - 1786
- New Bern (Craven County) – 1751-1804
- Salisbury (Rowan County) – 1799-1898
- Wilmington (New Hanover County) - 1765-1816
The way the site is currently set up, it seems difficult to get an exact title list, but I will try to find out and share that information here. A big KUDOS to the State Archives for providing this very invaluable resource! Want to stay up-to-date with the goings on? You can follow the Twitter feed of the Information Management Specialist of the State Archives. Click on the image below
